


if i'm never your hero

by braveten



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: (and Victor falls in love with him in both), (in which Yuuri leads a double life), (or the Vigilante AU that nobody asked for), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Blind Character, Daredevil AU, M/M, Vigilante AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-12 12:15:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10490700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braveten/pseuds/braveten
Summary: Yuuri Katsuki is familiar.(Maybe it's his eyes, maybe it's the scar on his wrist.)But no matter what life either of them are leading on that particular day, one thing is the same—they revolve around each other.





	1. for what i'm about to do

**Author's Note:**

> HI GUYS! I'm so excited to be posting the first chapter to this story (since I've been talking about writing it for agesssss).
> 
> The title of the fic is based off of a line from [Explode by Patrick Stump](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX9oJf67Okk), and the full line is as follows:  
>  _but if I'm never your hero I can never let you down_
> 
> I'd like to thank [chinxe](http://chinxe.tumblr.com) who made the [INCREDIBLE artwork](http://chinxe.tumblr.com/tagged/superhero-au) that inspired this fic!!! You should definitely check her out and send her some love because she helped me talk over the original ideas for this story as well!  
> I'd also like to thank [forovnix](https://forovnix.tumblr.com) for letting me bounce ideas off of her as well!!
> 
> While this AU heavily draws from Daredevil, I also took inspiration from many different DC and MCU storylines!  
> Also, as a PS - there is a blind character in this fic (thus the Daredevil reference). There will also be violence in future chapters.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

EXT. ROOFTOP IN NEW YORK CITY — NIGHT

 

When Victor Nikiforov is ten years old, he’s given a copy of _Harriet the Spy._

He reads the smallest words aloud, hoping that doing so will allow his tongue to acclimate to the English syllables. It doesn’t seem to help, though—they still come out clunky, unfamiliar, disconcerted. But Victor persists.

The moment that he moves to New York City with his adoptive father and brother, the thing that captures his attention the most are the buildings. They must’ve been built by gods, he thinks, because of their sheer size, their sheer capacity. They stretch out as far as the eye can see in every direction, and therefore Victor learns at a young age how to convince Yakov to let him stand on the rooftop of their apartment building and look out over the world as though he owns it.

Victor invests himself in his thoughts, wide blue eyes peering over the ledge and Yakov’s worried hands gripping his shoulders to make sure he doesn’t accidentally topple off. He watches the people walking below, watches the birds in the sky, watches the clouds move, watches, watches, watches.

In his book, Harriet observes people, discovers them through silent surveillance, and Victor wants to do the same. He writes notes about Yakov and his wife Lilia, writes notes about the doorman, the people he sees at the grocery store, or the people in front of him at his rare and treasured trips to the movie theater. Eventually, his notes span beyond just people—with Harriet by his side, Victor writes of buildings, street patterns, cars, Central Park, anything and everything he can get his young and eager eyes on.

When he’s twelve years old, and Yakov and Lilia are busied with his baby brother, Yuri, whom they’d just adopted, he finally gets permission to visit the rooftop on his own. Yakov seems to grant this permission reluctantly, but Lilia insists that he’s a smart boy, and Victor promises, genuinely, that he’ll stay away from the edge.

And he does.

He hears sirens, sometimes, and starts writing about those. What could be happening across town, if somebody’s hurt, if a life is being saved. He wonders if his father is there, since Yakov had just gotten a job as the chief of police. Whenever he hears those sirens, he’ll grip his favorite book just a little bit tighter. He can read the entire thing without trouble, now—can pronounce every word effortlessly. His teachers, Yakov says, are incredibly impressed with the quick progress he has made.

There’s a long, silver fishtail braid draped over his right shoulder, and a thick coat scrapes against his skin as the cold wind blows. The roofs of the buildings surrounding him look like sparking fish scales, he thinks—beautiful and melding together. The sun is almost completely gone from the sky, but the beautiful thing about New York is that it is still alight, like a flame refusing to die. No matter the time, it is alive.

He hears Yakov call for him.

Victor stands and dusts off his knees, but then hears a siren go off. It’s nearby. He steps closer to the edge of the roof, and hears Yakov call his name again, with concern thick in his tone, this time. Victor squints to get a better look and can only see ambulances gathering a few blocks away. There’s a truck tipped over on the street corner, people yelling.

He turns his head—Yakov is glaring at him.

Victor hurries inside.

 

INT. HISTORY MAKER TRIBUNE BUILDING — DAY

YEARS LATER

 

“Have you ever seen that TV show _Storm Chasers?_ ” Yurio asks, holding the metal end of his pencil in between his thumb and forefinger and waving it. An optical illusion, Victor notes—the wood appears to be made of rubber. “Those idiots who drive out into the middle of storms to try and document them?”

Victor’s desk is cluttered, to say the least. There are scribbled reminders and paper cups strewn across the surface. He picks up a few, tosses them into the trash can. Yurio is leaning against a nearby wall with one foot propped up against it, his long blond hair falling down in front of his eyes. “No, I haven’t,” Victor lies.

“Well, those idiots are you,” he says, “whenever you’re chasing a story. You think that the tornado will back down to you, but I hope you realize, Victor, a tornado isn’t going to stop and think, _oh, maybe I shouldn’t hurt this guy._ ”

“As poetic as that metaphor is, I think it’s stretching a little far.”

He realizes, of course, that Yurio is simply worried about him. Last night, Victor had been inches away from flying bullets due to a drug deal gone wrong. Gunshots had started going off and the police had piled in, while Victor had been watching with his head poking around the edge of a building and his notebook in hand.

Yakov had been…

Disappointed, to say the least.

(Disappointed in the fact that if Victor had taken two more steps to the right, he wouldn’t currently be physically capable of cleaning coffee cups off of his desk.)

(But the fact of the matter is, as everyone knows, that the intimate details and photos he’d gotten have lead to the exact type of article needed to revamp the newspaper’s business. One dangerous expedition at a time, Victor is saving not only his own job, but dozens of jobs.)

“Did Yakov send you here?” Victor adds, spinning his chair around, then stopping the movement with his toe on the floor. “To chastise me?”

“Yes.”

He’s surprised by the simplicity of the answer, but just nods, slowly. “He wouldn’t be chastising me if he had a reason to care about the fact that the paper will sell like a hot commodity tomorrow.”

“Victor…”

“What? You know it’s true. Nobody reads the paper anymore unless there’s a photo of men with guns on the front or some sort of cheesy celebrity gossip. We don’t want to stoop to the latter, so we’ve got to stick to the former.”

Yurio looks unimpressed. “So you’re telling me I should be more like you? Go find the nearest danger and become personally involved in it until I can live with myself at night? Until I can convince myself I’m doing it for the sake of my job?”

(That stings.)

“I never said that,” he says, voice and chest tight as he rises from his chair and marches to the coffee machine, grabbing his mug from the cupboard and putting it underneath the spout. He can feel Yurio’s gaze on his back like an itch he can’t manage to scratch, and the guilt is still bubbling and Victor knows, _knows_ that he’d played that card on purpose, just to get underneath his skin.

“Just take it easy, Victor,” Yurio advises. “You don’t want to give Yakov a heart attack at seventy, do you?”

Victor ignores him. The coffee is blazing hot as it spills from the machine and he opens up a packet of creamer, then two, then three, pouring them each in and watching as the light liquid merges with the dark. He grabs a plastic spoon and spins it, then walks back to his desk, noticing that Yurio is gone.

He’s not stupid.

Just because Yakov is the chief of police doesn’t grant Victor immunity from bullets, blades, and crime—he knows that. He doesn’t chase storms of stories because he believes there’s an invisible shield surrounding him, doesn’t chase them simply to save the business of a dying newspaper.

(The fact of the matter is: he doesn’t know why he chases them.)

But he does, and despite Yakov’s incessant warnings for him to stay away, he keeps at it, writing and scribbling and capturing moments. Christophe, a lawyer, notes to him on more than one occasion that perhaps he’s trying to subconsciously make amends for something, that by revealing countless truths to the people of New York, he’s helping himself as much as he’s helping them.

Yurio seems to be the closest to understanding him, as he always has been. Yakov assumes that Victor is the same unruly teenager who had wanted to look out over rooftops and daydream about sirens with a child’s naivety. Victor takes in a breath, still swirling the spoon in his coffee in the hopes that perhaps it will allow his thoughts to blend, too.

He sits back down at his desk, stretches out his arms behind his back. He notes, as he glances around the room, that there’s a new intern set to arrive in a few weeks. Celestino, the chief editor, is still going through the interviewing process, weeding out potential employees. Victor and Celestino have always gotten along well, though they’ve never been particularly close.

He knows that, on some level, Celestino also disapproves of his methods of getting stories, but the older man has never set out to stop him. Perhaps it’s the fact that they don’t know each other well, or perhaps it’s the fact that he, somehow, understands Victor better than he understands himself. Understands that what Victor is doing isn’t storytelling—it’s an unconventional method of catharsis.

He pulls up a document, watches the cursor blink at him, sharp and black on the white background. After turning down his screen brightness, he sets his fingers on the keys, index fingers familiarly resting on the _f_ and _j._ His thoughts still race with the memories of the drug deal that he’d been privy to, of the shadows crossing strange faces, of the feeling of his camera resting in his sweaty hands and of his heart beating, pumping, racing.

Victor types.

 

INT. VICTOR NIKIFOROV’S APARTMENT — NIGHT

TWO WEEKS LATER

 

**10-30 C. Eros Jewelry Store.**

Victor plucks his phone off of his nightstand and reads the police alert from the system he’d hooked the device up to, head still fuzzy with sleep. Makkachin lays pressed against his chest, and Victor has one arm around him, fingers shifting through his fur. He reads the text, blinks a few times.

(Translates it mentally. Police codes.)

(Robbery in progress at the Eros Jewelry Store.)

He has never heard of it, but he knows Yakov is probably on his way, if not already there. Makkachin lifts his head to look at him, and guilt shoots through Victor, as though the poodle can anticipate what he’s about to do, where he’s about to go. He bends down, kisses Makkachin on his head. Then, he changes out his pajama bottoms, chooses black track pants instead. He pulls a black t-shirt on and runs a hand through his hair—no time to waste.

His apartment is empty, hollow. It’s not particularly large, but not small either, as he makes a decent salary at his job and had gotten a good price on the place. But it’s hollow all the same. Every room feels unnecessarily large and constricting at the same time. First, he grabs his camera, puts the strap around his neck and makes sure it’s carefully tucked into its case. Then, he takes a notepad and pen, and he’s off.

It takes him a while to find a taxi.

He’s dropped off a few blocks away from the jewelry store, and then he hands the driver a wad of cash before setting off in a sprint. It had taken him far too long to get here, and chances are the situation has already blown over, but it won’t hurt to look. He’ll keep his head down, grab photos if he can and, as Yakov has begged him so many times to do, won’t get in the way.

When he turns a corner, he sees what’s happening. There’s a jewelry store at a street intersection, a large display window broken and shiny jewels scattered across the ground. Inside, Victor can just barely make out a cowering figure in the corner, the assailants obviously gone but the trauma still visible in the employee’s eyes.

To the left of the building, police cars are gathered. There are cops ducked behind their cars, guns in hands. Victor steps closer, careful to stick to the buildings and shadows. Beyond the police cars, down the newly-abandoned street, there are black figures tucked around buildings, invisible to the police officers but just barely visible to Victor himself, due to his angle. They’re holding bags and weapons, and Victor sees one of them poke their head around a corner to shoot at a cop car.

He shivers, then glances around for Yakov. He’s not there, Victor notices with relief. Yakov is too old for these things, despite his protests—he can’t be out here, can’t be dealing with criminals like this. Sure, he’s still a hard worker, working out cases and interrogating suspects, but the field is no place for a man of seventy years.

Victor’s mental confidence is betrayed by his trembling fingers. He takes his camera out of its case, lifts it delicately, points it at the few individuals that he can make out in the darkness. There are street-lamps in the distance, and if he could just get closer…

He’s currently hiding behind one corner of a building, but if he could cross the front of it and duck into an alleyway, he’d have a much better vantage point, while still being safe. He’d still be behind the police—they wouldn’t even see him if he were quick enough. Victor swallows, shuts his eyes for a brief second, and then dashes.

His feet barely touch the ground before he’s in the alleyway between two buildings, police cars now to his right and the jewelry store far behind him. Adrenaline courses through his veins and makes his heart threaten to burst, makes his skin tingle with excitement and fear, a euphoria bursting inside of him that he knows is wrong, is addictive.

And he raises the camera again.

The alleyway is narrow, empty. It ends when it hits another building, but it splits off into left and right paths that Victor can’t see down. His back is exposed, but he can’t bring himself to care, aiming the camera at the assailant that he can get the best view of. They’re focusing completely on the police, unaware of his presence on the other side of the street.

Although they’re wearing black face masks, some of their features are distinguishable. He snaps a photo, then more, then more. When he readjusts his positioning, slipping farther back into the alley, he can make out another figure, and takes a photo of them as well. Each comes out better, clearer than the last, and meanwhile the police are making gains on the criminals, talking into their radios, presumably to make a barrier around them and trap them in.

(What happens next happens at once.)

First, there’s a roar.

(An engine coming to life, breathing in, exhaling.)

Then, there’s a screech. Wheels turning, rubber squeaking against pavement with rapid acceleration, shouting as the criminals leap out of hiding and into the vehicle, all while it’s still moving, turning, twisting, contorting.

Gunshots ring, his ears ache, his heart slows to a dull throbbing, his thoughts blur like a movie projector that’s just an inch off from where it should be. Victor’s body stiffens, norepinephrine, feet ready to sprint yet frozen in place as he sees—a black dot, a vehicle, a van, coming directly towards the thin alleyway that he’s standing in.

He presses himself against the brick wall, but it’s useless. The van is big, bulky, will hardly fit in the alleyway in the first place. He can no longer hear the shouts of the police trying to catch them, jumping in their own cars and starting up their own engines. He can’t hear his own self anymore, can’t feel. Numb.

The black dot gets bigger, bigger, comes towards him.

If he braces for impact, then it’s not much of a brace at all. His expensive camera falls from his fingertips but is caught by the strap around his neck, blood drains from his cheeks and pales them, the van still screeching, still roaring, still coming, faster now, faster, but it has to fight its way through the slowed-down mud of time and the sudden thickness of the air.

(He’ll die, he thinks.)

And yet his thoughts don’t revolve around that point, instead they revolve around the photos on his camera, the police in the distance, the facts, the figures. He doesn’t think of himself, then, he thinks of the black dot that isn’t a dot anymore, that is now a full-fledged vehicle, that is about to hit and, most likely, kill him.

Victor dies.

(But he doesn’t.)

(Because he can’t be dead, can he? Can’t be dead if he feels his fingers shaking violently now, feels goosebumps breaking up and down his arms and feels, then, his shoulder hit something hard, his back hit something soft. Can’t be dead if he can cry out in pain, if he can feel the cold of the pavement even through the thin fabric of his shirt. Can’t be dead if he can think of his dog, think of Makkachin, think of who would take care of him if Victor were, in fact, dead.)

(Something on his shoulder.)

(He’s certain—there had been something on his shoulder.)

Now the police are talking to him, voices hazy compared to his own thoughts, sharp, clear, simple. He’s asked questions, and he answers, and blearily he hears that, yes, the villains have been apprehended, that, yes, everything is okay now, that, yes, the jewels have been returned to the store.

They take his camera, and he nods his consent as they download the photos.

“Did you see?” he asks, and the police around him are so shocked by the sound of his voice that they freeze, turn to him.

In the distance, he sees Yakov getting out of a police car, his cheeks flushed with anger and his feet stomping across the space between them.

A police officer tugs at the base of her blonde ponytail. “See what?”

“What saved me?”

Yakov storms over and glares at him with a concoction of emotions swirling behind his eyes. Words aren’t needed—Victor can hear them all. He takes a look at Victor’s shoulder, still bleeding, and watches as a paramedic wraps the injury for him. The officers quiet down, waiting for instructions from their boss.

“Go home, Victor,” he says.

For the second time that night, there’s a hand on his shoulder. It squeezes.

He notices as he walks towards his apartment building that the officers around him appear confused. It’s then that he hears whisperings of the robbers, hears rumors of the truth behind their capture. They’d been found a few blocks away from the jewelry store, wrists tied behind their backs and unconscious, but safe and alive.

It wasn’t the police.

Nor was it the police who saved Victor’s life.

He thinks back, constantly, to the ghost of a sensation of a hand on his shoulder.

 

INT. HISTORY MAKER TRIBUNE BUILDING — MORNING

THE FOLLOWING DAY

 

He writes an article, sends it to Celestino for preliminary approval with the click of a button.

In his peripheral vision, he sees Yurio grab a chair from a nearby desk and drag it over to Victor’s before sitting down. “You’re still looking at these?” he asks, and it takes Victor a second to realize that the photographs from the night before are still pulled up on his laptop screen.

They’re blurrier than he’d expected them to be, but some are still good enough to be on the front page of the newspaper. There are thirty one photos overall, and he clicks through them, again and again. He doesn’t reply to Yurio, just keeps clicking, watching as the robbers’ shrouded faces appear and then disappear.

“Hang on, what’s that?”

Victor glances at him, his finger stills on the mouse. “What’s what?”

“Flip back,” Yurio says, and waves his hand. Victor obeys. “There, hang on. Fourteen.”

Photo fourteen is one of the worst in regards to quality. It’s blurry, and one can just barely make out the figure Victor had been trying to capture. Yurio leans forward and puts his finger on the computer screen, despite the countless times Victor had asked him not to do just that. In the background, there’s another alleyway with another robber, barely covering a few pixels. “It’s another person,” Victor explains.

“Yeah, but click three pictures ahead.”

By photo seventeen, the background figure is gone.

Victor yawns and leans back in his chair, adjusting himself to get more comfortable. “He moved his head back. So what?”

“Go to fifteen,” Yurio commands, ignoring him. Victor listens again, and this time Yurio takes the mouse out of his hand, zooming in on the figure in the background. “Look. There’s somebody else beside him. See that? It looks like an elbow poking out. Why would a robber be poking their elbow out during a fight with the police?”

“An elbow?” Victor questions, squinting. “That could be anything.”

“Now flip through them slowly. The robber disappears, then the elbow does, too. And then… Hang on, look at eighteen. That’s a figure, right there. Different from the robbers. I bet _that’s_ the owner of the elbow.”

The more he looks, the more he sees. Yes, there’s a figure half-hidden by the shadows and the alleyway. In the foreground of the photograph, the first robber is still visible, his features now clearly caught by the camera. “Wait,” Victor says, and magnifies the photograph to the point where the pixels are giant chunks.

When he gets to the clearer pictures at the end of the slideshow, sure enough, in the background, there’s an unconscious body.

“That robber must’ve been knocked out. I’ll bet it wasn’t by a bullet.”

Victor runs a hand through his hair, flipping through the photos again, trying to sort them out. He’d noticed the unconscious body before, but never the shadowy figure that had been there only a few frames before the criminal had been knocked out. “The police didn’t catch them, you know. They were found tied up and unconscious in another alleyway.”

At that, Yurio looks interested, shifting his own chair away from Victor’s. He has been interning at the Tribune for a few years now. Victor remembers bits and pieces of watching Yurio grow up—the way he’d been too small even for Victor’s old clothes, the way he’d sulked around the house for days after Yakov and Lilia had refused to give him a cat, since they already had Makkachin.

“So that’s the person,” Yurio claims, flipping a few photos back and pointing at the clearest shot of the shadowy figure standing beside the criminal, his elbow sticking out. “The person who caught them.” Realization crosses his features in an instant, then, an epiphany slapping him across the face. He turns to meet Victor’s eyes. “ _And_ the person who saved you.”

“Eros,” Victor names.

Originally, he’d wanted to write a story about the mysterious circumstances of the capture of the robbers. But the police themselves had kept those details under wrap, and the last thing Victor would want to do is degrade his father’s teams for not having caught the criminals themselves.

He hadn’t even mentioned the fact that his own life had been endangered, since he figured that Yakov would have a heart attack if he saw Victor was now using his near-death experiences for a profit.

Yurio’s lips form a tight line. “Eros?”

“Eros,” he repeats, and zooms in. The photo looks as though it has been put through a monochrome filter, all sharp edges and contrasts. He can make out more intricate details, now—the shape of a face just barely standing out against the background, the distinct elbow that Yurio had noticed, the possible stretching of an arm towards the robber, who is more clearly visible. “That was the name of the jewelry store.”

Yurio takes the keyboard from him, opens up an internet tab and types something in. “You do realize that that means _sexual love?_ You’re going to name the person who saved your life after sexual love? I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or an insult. Gross.”

“What? Would you rather call them Batman?”

“I don’t know. It’s better than _Sexual Love Man - Nobody’s Favorite Superhero._ But whatever.”

Victor licks his lips, stares at the photo. “I’ll pitch an article to Celestino. _A new hero in New York: Eros._ I won’t say that he caught the criminals, but I’ll say that he helped in their apprehension. I’ll focus on these photos.”

He writes up some notes and Yurio gets back to his own gruesome task of editing some articles for the Style section. Then, he sets off towards Celestino’s corner office, notes and printed-out photos in hand. He’s careful to keep his thumb on the edge of the photograph, not wanting to smudge the fresh ink.

Victor is planning on asking for a small article—he knows Celestino won’t give a piece like this the front page. There isn’t much corroboration, vigilante stories are normally frowned upon as childish. But if Eros were to pop up again in the future, Victor knows that it would do him good to have already touched upon the story. Besides, something like this can’t be ignored.

Celestino isn’t in his office, but Victor catches sight of him across the room. He’s standing by the old, grand doors at the entrance of the building. As he speaks animatedly to someone, he’s walking towards the other end of the building. Victor steps forward, turns to move around a desk.

Hot liquid is promptly spilled down the front of his shirt.

He hisses and tugs on the fabric, moving backwards out of instinct. In front of him, hands are frantically waving, a cup is being set down on wood, and he glances upwards to see mocha irises looking past him, flickering, but never quite landing on Victor’s own. “Sorry, I’m sorry,” the man pleads.

“That’s okay,” Victor answers automatically, setting his notes and photos down on desk so that he can fully assess the damage.

“Napkins,” the man exhales shakily, and that’s when Victor notices the white cane with the red handle in his hand. “Where are napkins?”

He’s blind.

Victor grabs a wad of napkins from beside the coffee machine and begins attending to his own shirt. The man, awkwardly standing in front of him, reaches forward. Victor hands him some of the napkins, unsure of what he means to do. Then, the stranger is stepping closer, and feeling Victor’s shirt with his fingertips. When he finds the stain, he begins delicately dabbing at it with the napkins, eyebrows drawing together with concern.

Victor is wearing a forest green button-up, and the brown stain is visible, but not horribly so. After the man in front of him seems satisfied with his attempts to clean the mess up, Victor begins unbuttoning the shirt, then slips it off of his arms, clad only in a thin, white undershirt. A second later, the man starts babbling. “I”m sorry, I’m so sorry. I should’ve had my—”

“Completely my fault. I wasn’t looking,” Victor admits, and smiles, folding the shirt over his arm.

The man in front of him is wearing a dark blue sweater with a lighter plaid collar sticking out from underneath. The light from the chandelier above them seems to soften his features, illuminating and complementing him in a way that it doesn’t illuminate nor complement anyone else. Victor watches carefully as he reaches for the ruined shirt, face sinking when he feels that it’s still damp. “I’ll get it cleaned for you.”

“You’re new,” he realizes, and everything clicks. “The new intern.”

The man nods, every action still jerky, frantic. “And you’re…?”

“Victor Nikiforov.”

“I’ve read some of your articles online,” he breathes, and extends his hand. “Yuuri Katsuki. I’m Yuuri Katsuki.”

Victor shakes it—Yuuri’s grip is firmer than he’d expected. “A pleasure to meet you, Yuuri Katsuki.”

“I’m sure it’s not much of a pleasure for you.” He laughs nervously, gesturing towards the direction of the shirt. “I’ll get it cleaned.”

“No, don’t worry about it.” Victor sets the shirt over the edge of his chair, then shoves his hands in his suit pockets.

Yuuri reaches a hand to his right, finding the edge of the desk and then his coffee cup. He brings it to his lips, and it’s then that Victor notices his fingers are trembling. He takes a sip of it, then shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “I’ll… I’ve got to… Nice to meet you.”

Before he can respond, Yuuri has darted away, half-empty cup in hand, cane out in front of him. Celestino sees him and claps him on the back. Automatically, Yuuri takes his arm and is guided into his office, where they begin discussing something. Victor watches, feet stuck to the same spot they’d been when the coffee had been spilled on him, and analyzes.

Yuuri is a few inches shorter than Victor, but given the way that he folds his arms across his chest, keeps his shoulders clenched, he seems much smaller. It must be the stress of the new job—Victor has seen far more interns than him with just as much nervousness about getting a job at the Tribune. The industry is make-or-break, and a first impression can mean everything.

“Stop staring at the new guy,” Yurio says from behind him.

Victor snaps out of his concentration and slumps down in his desk chair, propping his legs up beside his keyboard. “I’m assuming you’re just jealous that you’re not the only intern anymore.”

With that, he earns himself a glare that has the physical equality of a punch to the face. “No, I’m not jealous of the guy you almost killed ten seconds ago, believe it or not. Nor am I jealous of anyone who has to interact with you.”

“You’re interacting with me right now.”

He rolls his eyes. “See you later, Nikiforov. I’m going to go and get work done.”

Victor knows Yurio well enough by now to recognize his defense mechanisms. He rests his elbow on his desk, chin on his palm, and watches as Yuuri explains something to Celestino, fingers running over braille characters on a device in front of him. Celestino meets Victor’s eyes through the office window, and Victor, feeling caught red-handed, offers a small smile and wave.

He glances back down at his notes about Eros, flips through the limited evidence that he has. Then, he opens up a desk drawer and shoves them inside, deciding that maybe it would be better to wait on the article, after all. He’ll debut his findings when he has more to back them up, when it can be a cover-page article instead of something filed away underneath the job ads that children often doodle on with crayons.

The headliner for today was about an up-and-coming politician, someone promising to make New York safer, better. Boring, from Victor’s point of view, but the paper hadn’t sold horribly. He begins sorting through emails, but his eyes continue to drift over to Celestino’s office, where Yuuri’s nerves seem to be lessening as his shoulders loosen.

 

INT. VICTOR NIKIFOROV’S APARTMENT — EVENING

SEVERAL HOURS LATER

 

“I want you to tell me more about the Eros robbery.”

Yakov stares at him from across the table, expression unchanging. “ _That’s_ why you invited us to dinner?”

From the kitchen, Yurio glances over at them. He’s digging through Victor’s drawers, removing any snacks he deems worthy. Eventually, he finds a box of crackers and some sliced cheese in the fridge. He puts them on a plate and carries them over to the table. Victor reaches forward and takes a cracker and slice of cheese, and Yurio reluctantly shoves the plate between them.

“Let me show you what Yurio and I figured out,” Victor pleads, and opens the manilla folder in front of him.

“Yurio and I? Way to take credit that isn’t yours,” Yurio retorts, but remains attentive all the same, watching as Victor stands up to place the papers in front of Yakov. Yakov begins glancing through them, and together, Victor and Yurio begin to point out what they’d noticed about photos seventeen and eighteen. 

The oven goes off, and Victor fetches the ready-made macaroni dish, setting it down on the center of the table and distributing plates. He tries to remember the last time he’d cooked dinner for his adoptive family, and quickly realizes that he never has before. Normally, he’d order pizza or takeout.

If Yakov thinks that macaroni and cheese is unimpressive, he doesn’t say anything, just takes a scoop and begins picking at it with his fork. His eyes are still narrowly observing the photos in front of him. “This could be anything.”

“Or,” Victor says through a mouthful, “it could be a person.”

“Or nothing.”

“Or _a_ _person._ ”

He exhales through his nose, glances up. “What do you want me to do with these, Vitya? You’re the reporter. Write a piece about it.”

“I need more information.”

A pause. Yakov seems to realize what's going on, then, and presses a palm to his forehead.

“Victor, I’m not going to—”

“A statement,” he blurts, the elephant in the room being spoken out loud. “Just a short statement for corroboration.”

Yakov pushes the papers back, takes a sip of water. “You invite Yurio and I to dinner at your home, make us this…” He pauses, as though trying to decide on an adjective. “…meal. And all because you want a statement from me? Didn’t Lilia and I raise you to be more polite, or was your personality immutable when we took you in?”

“Listen, I don’t need a statement. Off the record. Off the record, okay? I just want to know more. Do you know anything else? Any evidence of Eros?”

“Of _Eros?_ ” Yakov asks. Then, his fork clatters against the plate, the noise harsh in the quiet of the apartment. “You _named_ your imaginary vigilante?”

“It means sexual love,” Yurio provides, snickering.

“Vitya, you’re—”

“Please?” Victor interrupts, kicking Yurio’s ankle underneath the table and shooting him a look that clearly states _you’re-not-helping-our-case._ “Just tell me what you know.”

He sighs, and to Victor’s right, he sees Yurio take another giant scoop of the mac and cheese and put it on his plate. There’s a bagged salad, too, untouched. Victor reaches forward and takes it, pouring some of it onto his plate and drizzling a dash of caesar dressing on top.

“I don’t know much more than you do. They’d had an escape car and an escape crew stowed a block away from the jewelry store. They picked up the robbers, and that’s when they almost…” At that, he glances at Victor swiftly, then continues as though that phrase had never been started. “We chased them, but found the vehicle abandoned. Near it, tied to a chain fence, were all of the robbers. Every last one, including the drivers.”

“Unharmed,” Victor finishes, his tone posing a half-question and half-statement.

He nods. “No permanent injuries, apart from the blow that had knocked them each unconscious. Their wrists were tied with standard rope. Whoever did it, did it fast and did it expertly. At first, we thought it might’ve been one of our own men, but nobody fessed up to it or reported it.”

Victor sinks in his chair slightly. “And that’s it?”

“Well there was…” He purses his lips, then meets Victor’s eyes and sighs again. “Mila. She insisted she saw something.”

“Mila Babicheva?” Victor asks. A police officer.

He nods. “She’s not the type to lie. She said she saw someone leaving as she approached—she was the first to find the van.”

“Someone leaving?” His head reels. He makes a mental note to speak to Mila, to do more investigating. There’s something going on, something that he can feel in his curled toes, in his tingling skin. “Who do you think did it, then? If not for the person in this photo?”

Yakov takes another sip of water. “I’m not sure. It could have been another gang trying to get revenge on this one for some reason. We interrogated all of them, but none of them are sure what had happened, either. They were tight-lipped, but they said the vehicle had been hijacked, that they’d been picked off one at a time, had barely been able to put up a fight. I didn’t get names or a description.”

“But they said it was one person?”

“It was heavily implied, yes. But how one person could’ve done all of that in such a short amount of time, and with such expertise…”

Victor tilts his chair back. “So your theory is that one member of one gang took out all of those people, tied them to a chain fence, and then got away before the entirety of the NYPD could find them?”

A flame flickers in Yakov’s eyes. “My theory is that I don’t have a theory. It doesn’t matter who did it or why. The criminals were caught, and they would’ve been caught with or without the help of whoever did that.”

“This mac and cheese tastes like cardboard,” Yurio comments.

“Thank you,” Victor answers, and sets his own fork down because, it does, in fact, taste like cardboard. He puts the plate on the floor without a word and Makkachin comes over, licking the scraps.

Yakov looks unimpressed. “You let your dog eat off of these plates?”

“That’s all you know?” Victor asks, ignoring the question.

“That’s all I know.”

 

INT. HISTORY MAKER TRIBUNE BUILDING — MORNING

TWO DAYS LATER

 

Victor sees Yuuri Katsuki fumbling with the coffee machine.

His fingers are moving over the top of it, but there are no braille instructions, and he’s futilely running the pad of his index finger across the same five buttons, trying to figure out which one to push. Victor approaches him and takes the paper cup out of his hands. “Let me.”

Silently, Yuuri pulls his hands away.

Victor thinks better of his actions. He gently takes one of Yuuri’s wrists and guides his hand back to the cup, setting it there. Yuuri, understanding, raises his other hand, and Victor puts his fingers back on the buttons. “This one is small, this one is medium, this one is large. This is the ‘on’ button, and this is settings. You’ll want medium, I think.”

The touch is electric.

Victor pulls his hand away.

Yuuri presses the medium button, and offers a grateful smile in Victor’s direction. “Thank you.” Then, he moves his fingers to the baskets to the right of the coffee machine. “What’s what?”

“Sugar on your left, milk on your right, creamer up top.”

He takes a packet of sugar, then one packet of creamer. “Thank you.”

The coffee machine sputters as it stops pouring, and Yuuri removes the cup from the bottom. He sets it on the counter, and Victor watches as he pours the sugar and creamer in. “Has anyone give you a tour of the building yet? Introduced you to everyone?”

“No,” Yuuri says as he puts a lid on the coffee and then takes a straw. “I mean, I’ve been taken around briefly, but not a…”

“Not a proper tour,” Victor finishes, and grins. He sees Yuuri grin, too, and duck his head. There’s a flush that spreads from his cheekbones down to his neck, and up to the tips of his ears. It’s pink, hardly noticeable if one isn’t standing close. He’s wearing another sweater today, green this time, with a white collared shirt underneath. He pushes up his blue-rimmed glasses, which had been slipping down his nose. Victor wonders, not for the first time, why he wears the glasses in the first place. “Would you like one? Free of charge.”

“I would, but…” He looks apologetic, glances up in Victor’s direction. “I’ve sort of got a lot to do. I’m still trying to figure out how everything works, and, well…” He trails off, makes a vague hand gesture that Victor assumes is supposed to take the place of the rest of his sentence. With his other hand, he brings the coffee to his lips, takes a long sip.

“But you’d want to?” When he’s answered with a nod, an unexplainable relief rises in his chest. “I’ll talk to Celestino,” Victor offers. “Be right back.”

He ducks his head into Celestino’s office, is granted permission by the man who is currently talking on the phone and only paying half a cent of attention to him, and then makes his way back to Yuuri, who is leaning against the counter.

“He said yes,” Victor promises. “So would you allow me to take you on my patented grand tour of History Maker Tribune?”

“Since it’s free of charge, why not?” Yuuri jokes, and he has a breathtaking smile, Victor realizes—all sparkling teeth and gorgeous eyes that light up in the same way that the room around him does. “How expensive are these tours, normally?”

“Oh, several hundreds of dollars. You’re _very_ lucky, Yuuri Katsuki.” Then, he hesitates. “Do you want to…?”

“Take your arm? Is that okay with you?”

“Yes, that’s okay.”

Yuuri reaches forward, finds Victor’s forearm and slides his hand up to grip his bicep. He adjusts his glasses, and Victor finds his thoughts occupied by the potential reasons he may have for wearing them in the first place.

“Are you wondering why I wear glasses?” Yuuri asks, and Victor feels the blood drain from his face, as though he’d been caught thinking out loud somehow. Yuuri shrugs one shoulder. “It’s okay. Everybody wonders.”

“Do you read thoughts?” Victor asks, and Yuuri laughs at that.

“No, it’s just an experienced guess. My friend always says that I should wear them. So that’s why.”

He leads Yuuri towards the front of the building, figuring that they can start their tour at the entrance. “And why does your friend say that?”

At that, he laughs to himself and shakes his head, as though remembering something. “He’s… If I told you, you’d laugh.”

“I’m guessing it’s because he says they suit you?”

Yuuri looks surprised, and Victor has to admit that the feeling of Yuuri’s fingers gripping his arm is incredibly distracting, despite the innocuous nature of the contact. “That’s what he says.”

“They do. Suit you, that is.”

“I’m not fishing for compliments,” he promises. “That’s just my reasoning. Plus, I wore them when I was a kid, and it’s kind of… I don’t know. I’m used to them by now, I guess.”

So he wasn’t born blind, Victor notes in the back of his mind. They reach the front of the building and Yuuri’s hand slips from his arm, much to his dismay. “Well, here’s the entrance. The plaque is at your five o’clock.”

Yuuri turns. He traces his fingers across the letters, coffee cup still in his left hand. Victor watches as he drifts the tip of his thumb across the _H_ in History, the swirl of the _y,_ as he furrows his eyebrows in concentration trying to make out where the next word begins and the first one ends. The plaque is golden, embedded into the outside of the open cherry wood door.

“I’m guessing you know most of this already, but to the right are the bathrooms, down to the left is the conference room. Here, I’ll take you there.” Yuuri takes his arm again without a word, and Victor walks with him. “There’s a corner full-length window here. And here’s the meeting table. Chairs at noon, careful.”

Yuuri touches the chair, squeezes the cushion on the back of it. Then, he walks towards the windows without a cane, without Victor’s guidance, and reaches out a finger to find the glass. When he does, he steps closer to it. “What’s the view like?”

“Oh, right. It’s…” It occurs to him that he doesn’t even know if Yuuri has seen New York before, that he doesn’t even know where to start describing it. “Lots of skyscrapers, lots of people on the sidewalks below. It’s nice. A nice view.”

He nods slowly, then turns around, walks back to Victor and stops just a foot away from him. A grin blossoms on his features, slow, genuine. “Well, lead on.”

“Yes sir,” Victor answers. He leads Yuuri back down the hallway to the front, then starts down the rows of desks and cubicles. He introduces him to Emil, Michele, Guang Hong, Leo. Yuuri offers shy greetings to all of them.

They pass by Yuuri’s own desk, then loop around, and as they approach Victor’s own Yurio glances up from where he’d been leaning over a binder. “This is my adoptive brother, Yurio. Well, his name is Yuri too, actually, but we call him Yurio. He interns here.”

Yuuri smiles and extends his hand. Suspicious, Yurio takes it, shooting Victor a look with a thousand potential interpretations. “Hi,” Yuuri says.

“Katsuki, right?” Yurio asks.

He nods. “Yuuri. Yuuri Katsuki.”

“We’re both interns. Interesting, isn’t it?”

“Interesting?”

Yurio shrugs. “That we’re both interns. _Interesting._ ”

Yuuri appears confused, and Victor sighs, ruffling Yurio’s hair, much to the blond’s chagrin. “Ignore him. Moving on. Here’s my desk at your three o’clock. It’s cluttered.”

“How long have you been working here?” he inquires, and touches the edge of Victor’s desk, getting an idea of its location.

“About four years now. My father is old friends with Celestino. And you? What made you decide to take a job at the Tribune?” Victor pulls out his chair and sits down, leaning an elbow on his desk and looking up at Yuuri, fully taking in his appearance. The glasses do suit him, he realizes. At the same time, though, Victor can’t help but wonder what he’d look like without them.

His features are soft, cheeks round, eyes large and expressive. His green sweater compliments them, and is tight around his arms, which are built, muscular. His nails are neat—manicured, perhaps—and his hair is purposefully unkempt. He seems to be emotive in general, like an omnipresent flame that roars to life with the flick of a switch.

“Just finished college,” he explains. “Graduated and got this job.”

“Congratulations,” Victor answers, and smiles at him, hoping Yuuri will be able to hear it in his voice. He figures that he must be able to because Yuuri smiles, too. “You can sit if you want. Chair behind you.”

“Is this my second interview?” Yuuri jokes as he sits.

(It’s in that moment that Victor consciously realizes that Yuuri Katsuki is attractive. Yes, he’d thought it in the background before, but it’s now that he really, truly realizes what he’s dealing with here. He’s dealing with hardly-noticeable dimples and cute mannerisms like the way he can’t seem to stop adjusting his glasses or playing with his sleeves.)

“Your second interview,” Victor agrees, making sure it’s obvious in his tone that he’s kidding. “Question one. Where’d you go to college?”

“A small school in Detroit. You wouldn’t have heard of it.”

He hums. “Detroit?”

Yuuri nibbles on his lower lip. “Born in Japan, moved here when I was eight. Grew up here, thought I wanted a change, went to Detroit. Turns out I was wrong. So here I am again.”

“Here you are,” Victor agrees.

“As much as I’m… Shouldn’t we get back to work?”

“Yuuri Katsuki, the work-oriented intern from Japan who takes his coffee with one packet of sugar and one cup of creamer. I’m on the right track so far?”

Yuuri blushes, and this time he tries to hide it behind a hand. It’s a futile effort, because he’s smiling, too, and his smile not only affects his lips but his whole persona, his whole being. “Let me try.”

“Okay.”

“Victor Nikiforov, journalist from… Russia? Western Russia?”

He laughs. “Can you guess the city?”

“Moscow?”

“Try again.”

“Saint Petersburg?”

“Ding ding ding.”

Yuuri grins fully, then, and he’s not hiding it anymore, is leaning forward in his chair, obviously invested in their little game. “Okay. Victor Nikiforov from Saint Petersburg, Russia. Journalist. Writes about everything and anything. Moves to New York when he’s young, I’m guessing.”

“Correct.”

He taps a finger on the desk absent-mindedly. Victor’s eyes are drawn to the action, his attention raptured by it. “With your adoptive father and brother, you said.”

Victor opens up the mini-fridge beneath his desk and produces a soda. “Want a Coca Cola?” he asks, and Yuuri shakes his head. “Suit yourself. Anyway, everything you just listed were facts. No inferences there, Yuuri, and therefore no points.”

“Points? In that case, I’ll infer that you’re competitive.”

“No, I wouldn’t call myself competitive. Negative one points for you.”

“Negative points?” Yuuri questions, shocked. “Okay, um… I’ll infer that you pay attention to things. Thus the journalism. And that you have journalistic integrity.”

“Not all journalists have journalistic integrity,” Victor points out. He sets his soda down on the edge of the desk.

“But Celestino wouldn’t hire any without it.”

“Ding ding ding.”

Yuuri laughs, and it’s incredible, how Victor finds himself wanting to hear that again and again, like a newfound passion. He turns his chair to face him, but the edge of it hits the desk, and the soda, which had been precariously balanced on the ledge, falls. The can whizzes through the air, and Victor winces, knowing that Celestino won’t be happy when the brown liquid leaks through the floorboards.

Except it doesn’t.

(Because it doesn’t hit the ground.)

(Because Yuuri Katsuki sets it back on his desk.)

“I heard it falling,” Yuuri explains, and he’s laughing again, but it’s not that cute, innocent laugh anymore—now it has transformed into something else. “That was lucky, huh?”

Victor blinks, stares at him. He watches as Yuuri feels for the desk, then sets the can down, pushing it until it hits the edge of the keyboard, where it won’t be at risk of falling. “That was…”

“You should’ve gotten that on video. I bet it’d go viral.”

He can’t help but crack a smile at that thought. “Maybe we could reenact it.”

“So you _don’t_ have journalistic integrity,” Yuuri accuses.

“You caught me,” Victor admits.

As they continue talking, he finds his eyes drawn to the soda can.

 _Luck,_ he thinks. _It must have been._


	2. you've got to forge ahead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri deals with the guilt of keeping secrets from his best friend and continues to fight crime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys!! Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who has left kudos / a comment / a bookmark on the first chapter -- the response has been overwhelming! I hope you enjoy this next chapter as well!
> 
>  [My _if i'm never your hero_ Tumblr tag!](http://actualyuuri.tumblr.com/tagged/iinyh)
> 
> As per usual, be sure to let me know what you think! Every comment/kudo is appreciated! ^.^
> 
> p.s. some minor violence described in this chapter, it'll stay this way throughout the rest of the fic. you've been warned!

EXT. A STREET IN NEW YORK CITY — NOON

SEVERAL YEARS AGO

 

A young boy walks with a pair of figure skates swinging from his right hand.

He holds them by the shoelaces, and they have gold blades, shiny and brand new. There’s a black jacket around his shoulder that’s far too big for him—a hand-me-down from an older skater at the rink. He smiles as he thinks of discussing the recent Figure Skating World Championships with Yuuko at the rink. He’d worshipped the figures on the television with wide eyes, memorizing every movement and performance.

His mother walks beside him, and it’s cold. She holds the leash of their poodle, Vicchan, in her left hand. Her head is bowed, and the boy, her son, looks down at the poodle, speaking to his pet in quiet Japanese.

The rink is only a few blocks away when Vicchan slips out of his collar.

It’s only a few blocks away when a truck that just so happens to be filled with chemicals is trying to skid to a stop. The driver’s knuckles pale as he grips the wheel and squeezes his eyes shut, bracing for impact.

Only a few blocks away when Vicchan survives, but Yuuri is covered, chemicals flickering like flames as they surround him and cover his face, as he watches the world fade from vibrant color to permanent darkness.

(But with the loss of his sight comes a new sense: hearing.)

(He’d always been able to hear, yes, but this is new.)

(He hears the sharp flicker of a butterfly’s wing.)

(He hears, and it’s pain. It’s nothing but pain.)

 

INT. YUURI KATSUKI’S BEDROOM — DAWN

 

“Yuuri? Are you awake?”

He reaches up a hand to fix his hair and rolls onto his back. “I’m awake.”

The door swings open and Phichit enters, gently shutting it behind him. Yuuri’s room isn’t particularly large, nor is their apartment sizable in general, but it’s homely. There is a dresser drawer on either side of the bed and a soft blue carpet lining the floors. Everything is always exactly where it should be, and he can navigate it with ease.

“What time is it?” Yuuri asks as he feels the bed sink beside him. Phichit’s hair is messy, his entire body is aching with exhaustion. Yuuri hears his heartbeat—slow, steady, familiar. He’s shivering. If Yuuri listens closely, he can hear the chattering of his teeth, a noise so faint that Phichit himself probably wouldn’t be able to notice it.

Phichit lies down beside him on top of the covers. “Four in the morning. The hospital was crazy. Some guy ate a Lego truck the same hour that a woman decided to try a new sexual exploit. And then there were paperworks and surgeries going on and on and on and…” He groans and rolls onto his stomach. “Sorry for waking you up. I’m going to be sleeping all day so I wanted to ask how your job’s going.”

He can hear the fatigue creeping into his friend’s voice and Yuuri feels his heart break for him. As a nurse, Phichit does the best he can, but running off of hours of sleep that can be counted on one hand is taking years off of his life. “You have today off?” he asks, ignoring Phichit’s inquiry about his job.

“Yeah. That is, unless they call me in, which is more than possible.”

“If they do, just say that you can’t work.”

He rolls onto his side and faces him, and Yuuri can hear everything now that he’s more awake—the flutter of his eyelashes, the sound of a heavy breath, his body protesting the concept of staying awake. Silently, Yuuri reaches forward a hand and squeezes his shoulder. Phichit smiles—Yuuri can sense the contraction of the muscles, the crinkling of his eyes—every detail like a map of fire, of sensory.

“You’re avoiding telling me about your job,” Phichit accuses, then yawns.

“And you’re yawning in my face.”

He laughs and takes a pillow from the side of the bed, whacking him with it. “Come on, spill. You’ve been at the _History Maker Tribune_ for, what, two days now? What’s it like? How’s Celestino?” Then, he pauses, seems to consider something. “They’re all treating you okay, right?”

“They’re all very nice,” Yuuri assures him. “It’s going well. I like it.”

Phichit puts on a horrible imitation of Yuuri’s voice. “ _It’s going well. I like it._ Yuuri, I know you well enough to know when you’re leaving something out. What aren’t you telling me?”

Yuuri’s mind takes that question out of context. He thinks of late nights hopping rooftops, listening to sirens, dressing in shrouds of black. It takes a second to ground the guilt, push it back as he always manages to, and swallow, understanding the surface meaning of his friend’s words. “Nothing. There’s nothing.”

“Nothing?” he asks again, and there’s another yawn. “There’s no hot guys or—”

“Go to bed, Phichit.”

He huffs. “You’re no fun, Yuuri Katsuki.” At that, he pokes Yuuri in the chest, and Yuuri can tell he’s smiling again, but this time he doesn’t need to strain his ears—he can simply hear it in his voice. “Goodnight. Well, good morning, actually.”

Phichit rolls off of the bed and gets on his feet, padding through the door and shutting it behind him. Yuuri yawns and snuggles farther into the sheets, feeling the aching in his knees, in his arms.

There’s a bruise on his side from where a petty thief had kicked him a several hours ago—his guard had been down. He touches it gingerly with one hand and groans into the pillow. It’ll heal, but he’s not sure how long it will take.

He thinks of the little protection that his black outfit of choice offers him. He needs more protection than that, he thinks. Yuuko tells him that constantly, and he strains to try and think of what she must look like as she says it, tries to remember what little he’d seen of her before he’d been blinded.

Brown hair, ruby eyes, he thinks. If he focuses, he can just barely make out a picture. Now, though, he’s stuck with the concern lingering in every word of her voice, with hands squeezing his shoulders and the words _more careful, more careful, more careful._ He loves her, of course—they’d been friends since they were children—but sometimes her doubt chips away at his conscious.

With thoughts of Yuuko and Phichit in his mind, Yuuri falls back asleep.

 

INT. HISTORY MAKER TRIBUNE BUILDING — AFTERNOON

 

Yuuri can’t distinguish heartbeats at work.

He hears people shifting and speaking around him, but it turns into a blur, and he decides to just focus on the tasks at hand. His fingers feel the screen reader in front of him and he sorts through Celestino’s emails, which vary from story ideas to business deals. He writes notes for those of importance, trashes those that are not, and moves on. Occasionally, he’s sent a story to look at, though he’s not quite sure what impact his opinion has on anything.

“Want a soda?” a voice says from behind him.

(Now _that_ voice he can recognize.)

He turns around, feels himself smiling despite his efforts not to, because it’s just a question, just a simple question. Really, it shouldn’t make him this happy to hear Victor Nikiforov speaking to him. “A soda?”

“I happen to know where Celestino keeps his secret stash, so…” Victor starts, and Yuuri wonders if he’s smiling, too. He tries to listen more closely, and he’s not sure if it’s the background noise or the fact that his own heart is thudding in his chest, but he finds that he can’t tell.

“Sure.”

It’s placed in his hand, wrapped in a napkin, and Yuuri pops it open, taking a sip. “Coca Cola,” he recognizes.

“Looks like you know your soda brands.”

Yuuri takes another sip and shifts in his chair, wondering what Victor looks like, what his expression is like. He’s tall, lean—that much he can tell. And his heart is pounding. Not ridiculously fast, but not at a normal pace, either. He’s excited by something, and Yuuri can’t figure out what. “Looks like I do.”

“Can I sit?” Victor asks.

He nods and hears Victor sit down to his left, crossing his legs at the ankles. Yuuri isn’t sure what to say to him nor what to think of him. “I’ve, er, read your articles,” he admits, wanting to start a conversation. It’s not that Victor is hard to talk to, per se, it’s more that he’s intimidating, with his air of confidence and thick accent that, for whatever reason, seems to turn Yuuri’s mind to mush. “I know I told you that already, but… But they’re good. I read the one on that casino that opened up, and the gambling laws in New York. And the editorial on social reform.”

The way that Victor’s chest puffs further betrays his calm, cool tone. “I’m flattered. Do you write?”

“I… I want to,” he admits, feeling his cheeks heating and turning back towards his computer. With his right hand, he brushes the pad of his index finger along the screen reader, feeling the braille characters but not interpreting them, his mind elsewhere. “What made you want to start writing?”

“Curiosity,” Victor answers without missing a beat. “And yourself?”

He shrugs one shoulder. “I don’t really know. I just like it, I guess.”

Victor hums. “Fair enough.”

There’s a pause as Yuuri continues to read. Then, biting his lip, he makes an impromptu decision and turns back to Victor. “So has your job position always involved sitting with the new interns instead of writing or researching articles?”

At that, he laughs. “No, but I’d like to think of myself as the unofficial welcomer here at the Tribune.”

“That seems like a burden,” Yuuri jokes, feeling himself smiling. He’d heard a matching smile in Victor’s voice. “So you take the time to sit down with every new intern and offer them a soda? Are you sure it’s not just your way of subtly procrastinating?”

“I certainly didn’t come over here to be psychoanalyzed,” he teases. “But, to answer your first question, no, I don’t take the time to sit with every new intern. We don’t get that many, and you’re…”

Victor’s heartbeat increases. Ever so slightly.

(Yuuri’s does, too.)

He feels his cheeks heating but somehow manages to stay afloat in the conversation, keeps the inkling of confidence he’d grasped. “I’m what?”

“You’re… Um…” Victor starts, and it seems like he’s trying to pick a word out of the barren air. “You’re…”

Another voice.

“Yuuri, someone is here to see you,” a man says, and he recognizes the voice as Guang Hong’s. He hears him swallow and wonders if he’s making eye contact with Victor right now, wonders about the silent communication that he cannot see.

He dusts off his pants and clears his throat. “Someone is here to see me?”

He nods—he can hear the intricacies of the movement—and then thinks better of it and confirms verbally. “They brought you lunch, I think. Is it okay to let them in? I just wasn’t sure.”

“Oh, sure,” he says, realizing it must be Phichit. The hospital isn’t too far from the Tribune, which is one of the reasons they’d both been so excited about this position in the first place.

(And then he remembers that Victor Nikiforov is sitting beside him.)

Yuuri stands up, then realizes that he’s in public and takes his cane. “Want me to walk with you?” Victor offers, and there’s a genuine sweetness to his voice that makes Yuuri melt a little.

“No, I’m fine.” He steps forward a few paces.

He senses Phichit’s heartbeat when he listens for it. Distinguishing among heartbeats is difficult, but he has grown accustomed to having his best friend in the room next to his for over four years now, and he could pick the noise out on the busiest day imaginable in Times Square. “Yuuri!” Phichit says, and he’s holding a rustling brown bag. He thrusts it out towards him, then leans forward and puts Yuuri’s free hand on it. “It’s a sandwich.”

He smiles. “Thanks, but you really didn’t have to—”

“Who’s that?”

“Who’s who?”

“At your desk, smiling at me.”

“How do you know that that’s my desk?” Yuuri asks defensively.

“Screen reader, Yuuri. Duh.”

“He’s… That’s…”

“Can you take your lunch break right now?” Phichit begs, and takes his arm. “What, do you clock out or something? How does it work?”

“No, I can just go. There’s a break room down that way.” Then, he turns around, remembering his manners. “See you, Victor.”

“See you, Yuuri,” the Russian man answers, and there’s an unmistakable grin in his voice.

Phichit walks just a little bit faster. “Tell me _everything._ ”

“What?” Yuuri replies innocently.

“Let’s make a deal, Yuuri.” His voice is low. “You probably want to know what he looks like. And I want to know everything. This could be a mutually beneficial exchange of information.”

Yuuri groans as they enter the break room. Luckily, it’s empty. “You’re ridiculous.”

“But you _do_ want to know what he looks like, right?”

He opens the Tupperware container that his sandwich is in and takes a bite.

“You do,” Phichit realizes, reading his expression like he would a children’s book. “Okay, his hair is silver, and—”

“Silver?!” Yuuri almost drops his sandwich. “He didn’t _sound_ old. Oh no, that’s…”

“No, no no no no, no no,” Phichit assures him quickly. “It’s silver, but he’s young. I don’t… It’s either natural or he gets it done at some place expensive. Anyway, it sort of suits him. So silver hair. And I didn’t get a great look but he has blue eyes. We’re talking bright blue eyes. And he was smiling at me. He has a nice smile.”

Yuuri nods slowly, taking in that information. He lowers his voice. “So he was…?”

“Attractive? Objectively, yes. Not my type. But definitely your type.” Phichit sighs. “Yuuri, can I ask you a genuine question? Friend to friend?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, don’t take this the wrong way. You’re obviously very attractive. But how is it that only hot guys fall for you? Like, I’d think you’d get the whole flock, but even in college, it has _only_ ever been attractive guys. How do you _do_ that?”

“ _Phichit,_ ” Yuuri complains, and continues eating his sandwich. “I just met him. We’re not getting married or having babies. We’re not even friends, really.”

“Just met him. Right, duly noted. Now spill.”

“Well, he’s Russian…”

“I could hear that,” Phichit provides. “Born in Russia?”

“Saint Petersburg. He, um, has worked here for four years. He’s nice. I think he’s just talking to me because he’s nice.”

Phichit doesn’t sound like he believes that. “So you’re saying you _don’t_ have an office crush?”

“It’s not like we’ve known each other for a long time.”

“Ah, see, but a crush only takes a few minutes to form,” Phichit explains scientifically, then takes another bite of his sandwich. Yuuri’s is turkey, his is chicken. They’ve both got avocado slathered on top. “And I know what Yuuri Katsuki looks like when he has a crush. You get this blush in your cheeks when you talk about the person. It’s pretty endearing, actually. Ooo, I bet _that’s_ how you only get the hot guys!”

“Are you going to come here to torture me every day?”

“When time allots. They’re probably looking for me at the hospital right now. And before I forget—are we still on for our _Lord of the Rings_ marathon on Saturday?”

Yuuri smiles. “Sure.”

“Awesome.” He stuffs the rest of his sandwich in his mouth, swallows it quickly. “Okay, I should get going. The walk over here takes a few. See you tonight, don’t walk into walls, and I love you, okay?”

“When have I ever walked into a wall?”

“When you were drunk at that one party our third year in college.”

“Okay, but never while sober.”

“Touché. Bye, Yuuri.”

Phichit stands up, pushes in his chair, but Yuuri hears his footsteps stop when he reaches the door of the break room. “Hi. Phichit Chulanont,” he introduces himself.

“Victor Nikiforov,” Victor greets, and Yuuri winces. Phichit would never do anything to embarrass him—not outrightly, anyway—but the fact that he has now met Victor just means he’ll be stuck on the topic for an extra week.

“See you, Yuuri!” Phichit calls, and Yuuri can hear the knowing edge to his voice, even if it’s muted to everyone around them.

“Bye,” he replies, and then tosses a smile in Victor’s direction.

He hears Victor walk to the corner—there’s something heavy in the space there, Yuuri can sense, with the way that its particles vibrate and exude heat. A vending machine, he realizes as Victor begins to use it. “Is that your friend?” Victor asks casually. “The one who said that your glasses suit you?”

“Um, yeah, actually,” he answers, surprised that he’d remembered that tidbit.

Victor doesn’t say anything else in response to that, just takes whatever item he’d bought from the vending machine—chips, Yuuri identifies a second later by the rattle—and leaves.

 

INT. ICE CASTLE SKATING RINK — NIGHT

AFTER WORK

 

Yuuri’s key jingles as he struggles to fit them in the half-broken lock outside of Ice Castle. Eventually, though, there’s a click, and he swings the double doors open, placing his cane against the wall on the inside of the doorway and stretching his arms out behind his back. “Hi, Yuuko,” he calls, then waits.

He hears the shuffling of footsteps, a familiar heartbeat. There’s nobody else in the building, that much he can determine on his own. “Yuuri,” she greets, and then wraps him in a tight hug, squeezing the life out of him. “You’re free to skate.”

“Thanks,” he answers, and smiles at her. She squeezes his shoulder. “How was it today?”

“Busy. A lot of birthday parties.” Yuuko puts her hands in her pockets—he hears the sound of skin against denim—and walks off. “Be careful.”

She tells him that every time he skates. _Be careful._ As though she doesn’t know.

Yuuri makes his way to the lockers, runs his fingers along the top row until he has reached the one farthest to the left. He removes a few things, then sits down and pushes his hair back out of his eyes with a small dollop of hair gel. Afterwards, he puts on the skates, ties them tight, wiggles his toes inside to test them.

Ever since he’d been blinded, ever since he’d realized there was something different about him, Yuuko had been the only person in his personal life who he could tell. His parents would love him all the same, sure, but he’d never been able to bring himself to talk to them. When he was young and the sounds and smells and tastes had assaulted his hypothalamus and driven him to the brink of insanity, he didn’t know how to phrase it, didn’t know how to make them understand.

But Yuuko—Yuuko had never questioned him, only ever listened, just like he’d needed.

Yuuri steps out into the rink, and he can feel it. The cold rising from the ground beneath his feet, permeating the air, the slick feeling of his skates digging into the solid surface. He can hear the sharp, satisfying slice of them against the ice, can hear his toe pick dig into it when he angles his foot just so. He can hear a melody that isn’t truly there as he begins to move, skating in wide figure eights from this side of the rink to that side to this side once again, warming up.

His speed increases, and he’s acutely aware of the position of the wall. Five feet to his left, he thinks, then twenty feet to his right. He can still hear Yuuko’s heartbeat from where she’s sitting in her office, and outside of the building, a dull roar that he has learned to dampen. He turns a corner and then jumps up into the air, lands back down on his skates and continues. Moving, constantly moving.

He thinks of the black fabric in the locker off to the left, thinks of the sirens that he could hear if he chose to increase his range of hearing. Thinks of crime, of vengeance, of the bitter natural forces that rise and fall in New York City. With that, he jumps again, landing just as cleanly as he had the first time.

After a while, he’s done warming up. He does doubles, triples of every type of jump he has mastered. When he falls, it’s not due to his lack of sight, it’s due to his loss of his center, his lack of refined skills. He hadn’t been able to skate much when he’d gone to college in Detroit—only when he’d come back to New York on breaks or had managed to sneak into a favorite abandoned rink in the midst of the city.

He skids to a stop, thinks of what he could’ve been capable of if not for his incident. Thinks of whether or not he’d be gracing the rinks at the World Championships with Japanese flags being proudly displayed behind him by adoring crowds.

(But, no, Vicchan had run out into the street, and…)

He puts his guards on, then steps back out towards the benches. He grabs a towel off of a rack and dampens it with water in the bathroom, dabbing at his forehead. His palms press into the counter on either side of the sink and he shuts his eyes, breathing in, breathing out, steady.

It’s difficult, timing these little expeditions. 

Because Phichit normally checks on Yuuri when he gets home and his schedule is unpredictable. In theory, his shifts should end at midnight, but sometimes they can vary by hours. It’s only eight now, and Yuuri stretches out his arms once again as he leaves the bathroom and heads back to his locker. His skating gear is stored away and he grabs his black outfit instead.

Combat boots, tactical pants, gloves, wooden dowel rods that fit snug in his belt. It’s dark out, but not too dark, so he’ll stick to the rooftops until it’s safe enough to dare the alleyways. He picks up the black, sturdy fabric that forms his mask. There are unnecessary eye holes in it, but he figures that if anyone were to see him, they wouldn’t be able to assume that he’s blind.

“You’re going out again?” a voice asks.

He turns, faces Yuuko, and his heart stops in his chest. It’s obvious what he’s doing—he’s dressed head-to-toe in black combat gear and the fabric resting in his palm is unmistakable. “Yes,” he admits, and takes in a breath, waiting to see what she’ll do or say next.

Yuuko bites her lip. “Yuuri, I can’t keep watching you do this.”

“I know.”

“Then stop. If you know, then stop.”

He’d started his expeditions a few months ago.

At first, it had been minor things—stopping a fight or retrieving purses. Simple, innocuous acts. But as he’d continued, he’d stepped into bigger and bigger crimes, and two weeks ago at the Eros Jewelry Store he’d stopped an entire crew of misfits.

(And if he can, shouldn’t he?)

(Isn’t there a responsibility?)

It’s as though Yuuko can hear his thoughts. “The police can handle things,” she tells him, but they both know it’s a lie. Crime in New York is like a virus, spreading and growing and fading only to rise again and again and again, an inevitable, endless fight. There is always action to be taken.

“I’m saving lives,” he argues, and ties his mask around his head. Yuuri takes in a deep breath when the fabric is taut around him, when he’s clad in cloth armor, when he can feel the strength flowing through his muscles from being on the ice, from anticipating the danger to come.

“What about me?” she asks, and her voice is quieter this time, almost sounding like the young girl he’d used to know, before she’d gotten married, before she’d had the triplets.

“Yuuko…”

“What about Phichit?”

Yuuri winces.

Phichit is a sore spot, and she knows it.

He’d met Phichit in college, and there had never exactly been an opening to say _by the way, I’m not completely blind. My other senses are heightened to the point where I can hear your stomach growl from across a building._ Yuuri wishes he knew, but at the same time, with this new aspect of his life, it has only become harder to tell his best friend and roommate the truth.

“If something were to happen to you,” Yuuko says, and her words are slow, now, deliberate, “he’d never forgive himself.”

“But it wouldn’t be his—”

“He’d never forgive himself,” she repeats, cutting him off. “And I’d never forgive myself, Yuuri. It isn’t fair to us.” Yuuko pauses. “Go ahead, do whatever you’re going to do, but just know that. Know that it isn’t fair to us.”

(Across the city, a scream.)

His stomach churns. “I’ll be safe.”

“How can you say that?”

(Another scream.)

“I’ll be safe,” he promises again, because he isn’t sure what else to say. “So there won’t be anything to forgive. So that he won’t have to…”

“So that he won’t have to know?”

“It’s better,” Yuuri breathes, trying to convince himself. “Better that he doesn’t know.”

“Don’t let me stop you from playing hero, then,” Yuuko says, and he’s not used to hearing her voice clad with iron, not used to her words stopping him in his tracks, because normally she’s nothing but supportive, loving.

(A third.)

“I’m sorry,” he tells her, and she just watches as he walks towards the back exit.

Yuuri climbs the fire escape up, then puts his foot on the edge of a protruding brick to get the last lift he needs to scale the roof. When he’s up there, he sits on the edge, shuts his eyes and listens. At first, when he tunes in, the dull roar sparks to life, sizzling, burning, surrounding his senses and flooding his ears with both a physical and mental blow.

Footsteps below, the sound of a hand rummaging through trash, a young girl laughing, the smell of syrup, everything, nothing. Yuuri breathes in, then out, feels a picture forming around him, an image imprinted in his mind of the city surrounding him. Every smell, touch, taste, sound, adds to a model that he can navigate, and he can hear sirens both far and near, drawing him.

Eventually, though, he hears it—that same scream.

It’s high pitched, horrified.

A gap between Ice Castle and the building to the left. Small enough to jump. He sprints, imagining skates and ice beneath his feet, and leaps, makes the jump and continues. A vent to his left. He hops over it with ease and moves on, wind blowing against the little skin that he has exposed. Another gap, longer than the last one so he rolls, back to neck to feet once again, and then he’s back up, unstoppable.

When he gets closer, he can hear—punches being thrown.

When he’s on top of the building, he can hear the sniffling.

Four individuals. One is hurt—that’s where the screaming had been coming from. Two are together, fighting, and one is trying to ward them off. Losing. The victim.

Yuuri’s foot presses into the brick wall and he focuses for a second. A metal landing to his right, low enough to reach. He jumps, and it clatters as his feet make an impact. The people below pay no mind. Then, he climbs, hands and feet on bricks and metal, different parts of the building coming to his advantage.

That’s when they notice him.

He dodges left, throws a punch to his right. A hit.

Then, a duck, a roll to the right. He hears the parting of the air, and a chain clattering nearby. The scent of iron in the air—blood, he thinks, but not his own. He throws another punch at the second man, but beside him, the first one has gotten back up, and is coming back towards him. Yuuri misses, and he’s cornered by both of them, the two victims huddling together and backing away. He never gets a good look at them, because they’re calling the police, hurrying away with wide eyes.

 _But they’re safe,_ he thinks briefly, as one of the men swings at him again.

He dodges it, but the one on the left follows up quickly.

An unexpected impact.

Yuuri’s jaw makes an unnatural noise as he stumbles to his right, clutching his cheek with one hand and keeping his other raised for defense. On his belt buckle, he reaches for a dowel rod, lifts it up and whacks one of them hard on the side of their head.

One of them fall.

The other one backs up, intimidated, and Yuuri swings again, harder this time. It’s an instant impact, and he falls, too, crying out in pain. Yuuri still holds his own face with one hand, cradling it, and backs up, chest heaving. They’re both on the asphalt, quiet groans occasionally rising from their crippled bodies.

It’s then that he slips the dowel rod back into his belt buckle and better assesses the damage done to his face. He’d let them both come at him at once—that had been the problem. Minako’s words ring in his ears from the time he’d spent training under her: always take on enemies one at a time, no matter how many there may be. 

 _It’ll heal though,_ he thinks as he gingerly touches his cheek. Perhaps it’ll bruise, but it’ll heal. His teeth aren’t damaged, which is a plus. His jaw simply aches.

Most of the time, Yuuri manages to avoid injuries altogether. And when he does get hurt, it’s normally in an easy-to-hide location on his body. This, though? If this shows, he could have a problem. He’ll need to come up with some sort of an excuse.

One of the men tries to get on his feet, and Yuuri kicks him square in the jaw. With another guttural moan, he falls back to the ground, and Yuuri leans against the brick wall, eyeing the rooftop and trying to rest as quickly as possible before he’ll leave once again. He cocks his head, listens for police sirens.

Sure enough, they’re coming.

With that reassurance, he climbs, makes his way back onto the smooth, cool surface of the roof and begins hopping again, this time directionless, simply trying to get away from the scene of the crime. Already, though, he hears another crime taking place—a child’s crying, kicking.

So Yuuri runs.

(And lives.)

 

EXT. WEST 43RD STREET — NIGHT

TWO HOURS LATER

 

Yuuri swings open the front doors of Ice Castle—Yuuko is gone, the building is empty.

He finds his items in his locker and changes his clothes, aching when he pulls the mask off of his face and realizes that his jaw still agonizingly aches. He heads into the bathroom and tries to get a feel for it in the mirror. If Yuuri is lucky, Phichit won’t notice, and if he does, he’ll just have to come up with a viable excuse.

With his cane in hand once again, he exits the building and keeps his head low. Ice Castle isn’t particularly far from his and Phichit’s apartment. He keeps the white stick out in front of him, swaying it back and forth despite the fact that he can sense what’s around him, despite the fact that he knows it isn’t about to hit anything or anyone.

And then he hears a voice.

“Why couldn’t Sara come? Is she working a case?” a Russian voice asks, and then there’s a reply from someone walking beside it.

_Victor._

The stench of alcohol is unmistakable. He and his friend’s words slur together and their footsteps are uneven, sloppy. Yuuri ducks his head, considers crossing the street but hears cars moving beside him. There’s a mailbox to his right, though, so he turns, tries to hide by acting busy and keeping his cane in front of him to hide it.

Then, though, Victor speaks again. “Hang on—Yuuri?”

Yuuri cringes internally but turns anyway. It’s too dark out for Victor to see the bruise coating his cheek, hopefully. “Hi, Victor.”

“What are you doing out here so late?” he asks, and it’s odd, because the amount of alcohol that Victor had consumed based off of his breath doesn’t add up with the clarity of his words. _A high tolerance,_ Yuuri supposes.

He smiles, runs his fingers through his hair, which is still wet from when he’d washed the gel out after returning to Ice Castle. “I could ask the same of you.” He keeps his chin tucked, the bruise unexposed.

The man beside Victor is, apparently, far more intoxicated. He steps forward and Yuuri can hear the swoosh as he extends his hand. “Hello gorgeous. Christophe Giacometti.” A hiccup.

Yuuri doesn’t shake it, and just because he’s blind doesn’t mean that he can’t imagine the stare that Victor gives his friend. Yuuri simply smiles politely, and after a second that most likely contained an epiphany, Christophe lowers his hand. “Yuuri Katsuki.”

“We were at a bar,” Victor tells him.

Christophe starts giggling, and Yuuri hears Victor’s feet shift as the other man leans on him. “We drank the eels,” he mumbles under his breath.

“Chris is convinced there were eels in our drinks,” Victor explains. Chris laughs harder. “Sorry about him, he had a bit too much. Anyway, are you heading home?”

“Yeah, and I think my roommate is waiting for me, so I’d better…”

Victor swallows. “Well, Chris’s apartment is right here—I’m just dropping him off—and my apartment is in the direction you’re heading, so…” He trails off, and swallows again. Yuuri can feel carefully-concealed nervousness radiating from him.

(He should say no.)

(He should absolutely say no.)

(Everything is telling him to say no.)

Yuuri rationalizes his answer by saying that Victor is drunk, and that somebody should probably make sure he gets back to his apartment safely. Or that walking Victor home will provide him with an excuse of why he was out so late in case Phichit asks.

(In reality, Yuuri knows that he doesn’t grin because of either of these reasons. He grins because of the way that Victor’s voice seems take apart any last semblance of his rational thought.)

“I’ll wait,” Yuuri offers.

He can’t see Victor’s reaction, but he can hear the intricacies of it. His breath catches, his entire body jumps a little, surprised and delighted. It’s endearing, the excitement that radiates from him. Yuuri wonders, briefly, if it’s visible. If his reaction is hidden, then the other man is automatically put at a disadvantage since Yuuri can practically read his thoughts.

(Briefly, a twinge of guilt.)

But he remembers that it’s not his fault, remembers that he can’t help but hear. It’s not as though he can mute the sensory. So he just smiles again. “I’ll be right back,” Victor promises, and Yuuri hears him take Christophe’s arm and guide him into a building.

Yuuri touches his own jaw, thinks that it’s going to need ice. He’ll have to get some after Phichit has fallen asleep. He folds up his cane and leans against the postbox, waiting. A few minutes later, there are crescendoing footsteps, and the smell of alcohol is back, mingled with cologne that Yuuri makes a note of. It’s hard to distinguish colognes and perfumes in crowds, and he’d only ever been with Victor in the office before. Now, though, he can identify it as his.

“Where do you live?” Yuuri asks.

“West forty-ninth. And yourself?”

“Forty-seventh,” he answers, unfolding his cane.

Victor turns his head as they start walking. “You can… You don’t need to use that. If you don’t want to, obviously. If you do, that’s… I’m just offering…”

Yuuri pauses, smiles a little more, because Victor’s reaction to him is ridiculous, all cut-short breaths and fluttering eyelashes. “Do you get flustered more easily when you drink?”

“No!” A pause. “Well, maybe. Anyway, sorry for asking, I shou—”

He reaches out a hand, finds Victor’s arm and laces their elbows. He can acutely hear the tension leaving the other man’s body, the relief that he hadn’t messed up. Yuuri laughs a little, thinking of something. “Maybe you’re not the best person for me to hold onto if you’re drunk.”

“My footing is always steady, Yuuri,” Victor promises, his voice a drawl. Any earlier lack of confidence is gone, and now he’s back to normal, tone dripping with his usual I-walk-on-top-of-the-world vibe. “You never told me what you were doing out here. It’s… What time is it?”

Yuuri laughs, and notes that Victor gently pulls him to the left when there’s a streetlamp about to block his path. “I think midnight. I was… Visiting a friend.”

“A friend? Was it the same friend who brought you lunch today?”

“No, I live with him. This was a different friend.”

“Ah,” Victor understands. “You’re visiting a friend so late?”

“And you’re getting drinks so late?”

“Yes. Maybe with you, next time.”

Yuuri feels goosebumps break out across his arms as those words sink in. “What?”

Victor’s voice is nonchalant, but Yuuri can tell his skin is tingling, can feel every nerve lit like a match, knows that he’s hyperaware of every detail of the conversation. _So he is hiding it,_ Yuuri realizes. He is hiding it, hiding it with his tone of voice and his body composure, probably. And yet…

He starts to sway his arm playfully. “Just an idea. Just a drunk man speaking.”

“A drunk mind speaks a sober heart,” Yuuri quotes.

Victor hums. “I don’t see much of a purpose in avoiding a point, drunk or sober. As a journalist, I prefer to cut to the chase. So what do you say?”

Running across rooftops and fighting crime hadn’t stolen as breath as much as this is, here, right now. His throat feels dry and with his free hand he tugs at the collar of his shirt, trying to gain his composure and failing miserably. Victor Nikiforov is asking him out. Properly asking him out.

(Which is normal, isn’t it? Because people ask people out all the time, because that’s how life works, that’s how things happen and relationships develop. It’s normal, a normal question, a casual question, so why is Yuuri’s mind threatening to shut down, why does he feel like he’s high on unearned euphoria?)

(Perhaps it’s because he’s just him. And Victor is Victor, who is interesting, and suave, and essentially everything that Yuuri is not. They’re polar opposites, especially socially, where Victor seems to know everyone in the office’s drink of choice and Yuuri has a hard time introducing himself to any one of them.)

“That’s fine,” Victor adds, quicker now, patching up the wall that seems to conceal his deeper emotions. “That’s fine if you don’t want to.” Backtracking. “I didn’t mean anything serious.”

(Oh.)

(Right—of course.)

“Yeah,” Yuuri hears himself saying. “I’d like that.”

“Yeah?” Victor asks, and he’s happy, now, all serotonin and grins.

“As long as there aren’t eels in our drinks.”

Victor snorts.

(Actually, really snorts.)

(It humanizes him, somehow.)

“Deal,” he says. “Saturday?”

Yuuri bites his lip. “I can’t Saturday, I’ve actually… I’ve… Got other plans.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t laugh.”

“Can’t promise that—I’m drunk, remember?”

Yuuri bumps his shoulder playfully. “I sort of have a _Lord of the Rings_ marathon planned with my roommate. You know, the one who brought me lunch today.”

“Ah, so you’re a Tolkien fan? I should’ve known. You’re the type, Yuuri Katsuki.”

Phichit is really more of a Tolkien fan than Yuuri is, but he can’t find it within himself to disagree. “The type?”

“Mhmm. The type. _And_ if you agree to get drinks with me on Sunday,” at that, he bumps Yuuri’s shoulder back, “then I’ll tell you what other types of things you are. I’m very observant, you know.”

“Convincing, too.”

He preens.

Yuuri purses his lips, considering for a second. Victor turns to look at him, watching, anticipating. “You’re sure you're not going to regret asking me when you’ve sobered up?”

“I think my sober self will deem my tipsy self a hero,” Victor tells him seriously.

In a second, Yuuri is laughing, and Victor laughs, too, once again gently leading him out of the way of a streetlamp. “Then yes. Drinks on Sunday.”

“Drinks on Sunday,” he repeats, as though testing the words. “Oh, this is forty-seventh. Your apartment building is…?”

Yuuri knows precisely where he is, but doesn’t want to be impolite. He points to the right. “That way. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Victor shakes his head. “I’ll walk you to your building.”

 _It’s dark out,_ he doesn’t say. _Cars might not see you,_ he doesn’t add. But Yuuri hears it anyway. He has heard those words more than enough times from Phichit. But, again, there’s a generosity in Victor’s voice, a pure caring. “Okay,” he acquiesces, and they cross the road.

A minute later, he stops walking, and Victor stops, too, seemingly surprised. “This is it?”

“Yeah. Thanks for walking with me.”

“Thanks for walking with me,” Victor says, and they haven’t unlaced their arms yet, still standing side-by-side in front of the building. “See you tomorrow?”

“See you tomorrow,” he confirms.

Victor pulls his arm away and Yuuri hears the rustling of hair. Phichit had said that Victor’s hair is silver, and Yuuri tries to imagine it, tries to picture it. He turns and enters the building, sending one last parting wave over his shoulder. He can hear that Victor hasn’t moved yet, but as soon as Yuuri is out of sight the journalist starts back down the street, and Yuuri finds himself smiling ridiculously, unable to stop.

He unfolds his cane again and finds the elevator, stepping inside and feeling for the familiar button, not needing to check the braille. Yuuri waits and then steps out, finds his apartment and digs the keys out of his pocket. He stops outside of the door, knowing that Phichit is inside by the sound of his heart and his breathing.

He’ll go straight to the bathroom, tell him he wants to shower, Yuuri tells himself, remembering the bruise. It had been harder to see outside, but the lighting of their apartment combined with the fact that Phichit couldn’t miss a paper cut on Yuuri’s thumb means that it’s extremely likely to be addressed.

He unlocks the door, enters. “Hi, Phichit,” he calls.

“Yuuri!” Phichit says from the kitchen, glancing at him over his shoulder. “Where the hell were you? Hanging with Yuuko past midnight?”

“Yeah we, um, got sidetracked,” he explains, hanging up the apartment keys and heading towards his bedroom. “I’m going to shower.”

“You had me worried. I texted you.”

“I must’ve missed it,” Yuuri says, opening his bedroom door. “Sorry for scaring you.”

Phichit licks his lips. “That’s okay. I figured you were with Yuuko, but… Don’t you want food or something? Did you eat?”

“I ate,” he lies, and ducks into the room, shutting the door.

Warm water beats down on his back, touches the bruise from a night ago. He hisses, but keeps it quiet enough that Phichit won’t hear. Then, the water trails down his jaw, and he touches it again, hoping the heat will alleviate some of the pain. It helps, a bit. He washes his hair, washes his body, steps out and puts on a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt.

Yuuri opens his drawer, finds a bit of acne concealer that he’d used in emergencies at college. Then, he dabs some of the makeup on his thumb, in lieu of a sponge, and puts it along his cheek, trying to blend it together. With a tissue, he thinks that he manages to do a half-decent job. If Phichit doesn’t look too closely at him, he’ll be fine, he hopes.

He steps out of the bathroom and into his bedroom.

Phichit is sitting on Yuuri’s bed, waiting.

In a second, a hand flies to the Thai man’s mouth. Yuuri isn’t sure what would be worse—sticking to imagining his expression or being able to see the real thing.  “Yuuri,” he breathes, and stands up, crossing the space between them in no time. “What happened? Oh my god, I knew you were… What happened?”

“Nothing, it’s fine,” Yuuri dismisses, trying to close off his mind, wishing he could trap himself inside.

“You’re a terrible liar,” Phichit snaps. “Were you putting on _makeup?_ Is this makeup?” He touches Yuuri’s cheek. “What is going on?”

He turns his head away, swipes at Phichit’s hand to lower it. “I’m fine, seriously.”

“Yuuri…”

There’s pain in his voice.

Yuuri’s soul shatters in his chest.

“I tripped,” he blurts. “On the way back from Yuuko’s. I tripped, and I didn’t tell you because it’s stupid and embarrassing, but I fell into a postbox.”

There’s a pause.

Phichit doesn’t believe him.

The issue with leading a double life is the simple, unfortunate fact that Yuuri is a terrible liar. But Phichit takes his shoulders, leads him to sit down on the edge of his bed, then walks towards the door. Yuuri can sense the anger swelling inside of his friend, but not as strongly as he can sense the tears stinging at his own eyes. He doesn’t want to lie, but what choice does he have? Phichit would never understand, would never stop worrying…

The sound of the ice machine on their fridge.

Yuuri swipes at his eyes, tries to compose himself.

“Ice,” Phichit says as he enters the room again, and the bed sinks beside Yuuri. He presses the cold bag to his face and Yuuri holds back a hiss. “Yuuri, I’m not mad that you stayed out late or whatever, obviously you can do what you want. I’m upset that you don’t trust me enough to tell me that you tripped. What do I care? I just want to help you. Do you think I’d laugh or something?”

“No, I just…” He trails off. “I don’t want you to worry about me,” Yuuri says, and it’s genuine.

Phichit turns his head.

Phichit has known since the start that something is going on. Quiet looks, suspicious words. Something driving a wedge in the middle of their friendship, slowly and silently but surely. It hurts to think about, yes, but then Yuuri thinks about the lives that he has saved.

As a nurse, Phichit knows a thing or two about saving lives. Yuuri thinks that if Phichit were able to get an objective perspective on the situation, if it wasn’t his best friend doing the roof-hopping and crime fighting, that he’d want it to continue.

At least, that’s what gets him through the night.

“Wasn’t Yuuko walking with you?”

Yuuri hadn’t thought of that.

“She was, but I told her to turn around when we were near the apartment building,” he says, guilt seeping into his words at the thought of bringing Yuuko into his spiral of lies. “My fault, not hers. Completely my fault.”

“Let her walk with you the whole way next time,” Phichit says, his voice carrying gravity. “Seriously. Do you think walking around, blind and alone, after midnight in New York City is a good idea? Anything could happen.”

 _Except it won’t,_ he tells Phichit in his mind. _It won’t because I’m not blind in the way that you think I’m blind._ “Okay,” Yuuri says instead.

“Every day I work in the ER,” Phichit adds, slower, his words steadier, a tone that Yuuri has seldom heard him use before. “And whenever someone comes in on a gurney, there’s a part of me that thinks…”

A pause.

Thick.

(Thick as Yuuri is torn in two, as he wants to weep in Phichit’s arms and tell him everything, tell him about the hell that he’d gone through as a child and the vigilante that that hell had produced, tell him everything, everything, cry like he would to his mother.)

(Thick as Phichit looks at him like he’s as fragile as glass, like he’ll shatter with the barest touch and like he’s considering walking Yuuri home from work every day, like he’s considering getting him the seeing-eye dog that he’d suggested so many times in the past.)

“Sorry,” Phichit says, then shakes his head. “I mean, _I_ shouldn’t be sorry, but sorry for bringing that up. That’s not… Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri tells him, and it’s true. “I’m really sorry, Phichit.”

Evidently, Phichit can hear the integrity in his words, because he hugs him tight. “That’s okay. Just don’t lie to me, okay? That’s all I’m asking.”

_Just don’t lie to me._

Yuuri can’t bring himself to respond.

So they stay like that, for a while, in each other’s arms. Phichit is warm and familiar and Yuuri feels loved and safe and it makes his chest ache because he knows that he doesn’t deserve a friend like him, knows that he doesn’t deserve this. But he thinks of the relief on the faces of those that he’d saved tonight and it’s an internal battle, a constant war thrashing against the corners of his mind.

“I have news, by the way,” Yuuri tells him after they’ve been silent for a while.

Phichit pulls away, obviously interested. “What?” He presses the ice pack back to Yuuri’s face and Yuuri holds it there for him.

“I bumped into Victor on the way home, too.”

“Victor silver-hair-guy Victor? Victor from work? What’s the news?”

Yuuri grins. “He asked me to go get drinks with him on Sunday.”

“That’s great!” Phichit says, and hugs him again, excited. “That’s going to be great. I told you that he liked you. I guess I’m just always right.”

“Always right,” he agrees with a purposeful roll of his eyes.

“We’ll make you look irresistible. Ooo, I could do your eyeliner. Would you let me? I promise it'd be even. Victor would pass out on the spot, guaranteed.”

Yuuri bites his lip, considering. “Mascara. Maybe. I think eyeliner is too much.”

“It wouldn’t be too much, but deal. Can I come with you? I can, like, casually sit in the corner, flirt with other guys, keep an eye on you two in case things get…” Phichit lets his voice trail off suggestively.

“It’s just a drink,” Yuuri protests. “He said it himself—he doesn’t want anything serious. So it’s just a drink. But… Still nice, I guess. And would you mind coming? I think it’d be better to have someone else.” He adjusts the ice pack. “Less awkward.”

“Sure. Tell him to bring a cute friend. I saw plenty of nice faces around your work. In fact, I might have to making bringing your lunch a regular thing.”

“Should’ve known you were just using me this whole time because of my place of employment,” Yuuri complains sarcastically, falling backwards on the bed, then yawning. The ice feels good on the bruise, but he can’t shake the constant feeling of guilt in the background of his every action when Phichit is in proximity.

He remembers their days in college together, when their friendship had been unbarred apart from the hidden truth regarding Yuuri’s heightened senses. At least back then it had been a lie by omission. Now, with the vigilantism? Now it’s difficult to remind himself on a daily basis why he can’t come clean, now it’s difficult to think about.

“Goodnight,” Phichit says, and stands up, heading towards the door.

Yuuri smiles. “Goodnight.”

He lingers in the doorway and swallows. “Hey, Yuuri… Listen. You know that you can tell me anything, right?”

“Yeah, I know that,” he answers, surprised.

“Okay, cool. Because sometimes I feel like I tell you everything, but maybe you’re not… But maybe you don’t feel the same way.” He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “So I’m glad to hear that you do. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edit: originally had yuuri looking in the mirror -- whoops. fixed!


	3. i simply refused to feel the flames

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor receives new evidence regarding Eros and goes out on a date with Yuuri.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY ABOUT THE DELAY WITH THIS CHAPTER! Real life and distractions kept getting in the way hahaha.
> 
> Check out [this beautiful art of Eros](https://bitchitkun.tumblr.com/post/159181178138/i-havent-been-on-here-in-a-while-but-i-had-to%22) by the fantastic [bitchitkun](https://bitchitkun.tumblr.com)!  
> My _if i'm never your hero_ tag is [here](http://actualyuuri.tumblr.com/tagged/iinyh)!
> 
> I hope you enjoy this chapter, and comments/kudos are appreciated! ^.^
> 
> ~ Also, I did change Phichit's age in this fic to match Yuuri's.

INT. HISTORY MAKER TRIBUNE BUILDING — MORNING

 

Victor sprints to his desk.

He almost knocks off an empty coffee mug, but it’s worth it. He shoves papers out of the way and grabs his keyboard, pulling it closer to him and desperately typing in his email address and password. Yurio is beside him, eyebrows drawn together. “What’s going on?”

“Video evidence,” he manages to get out, then wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. “Someone sent me video evidence. Chris, you know Chris? He was working a case with a woman who, and she, and they got…” He pants, grabs for a bottle of water only to find that it’s empty, too, and tosses it over his shoulder. “Get me water.”

To his surprise, Yurio obeys. He sets the bottle on his desk and Victor downs half of it in an instant. “Evidence of what? Did you sprint here?”

He nods, clicks open the first email in his inbox. “Eros,” he tells him, and turns to meet his eyes briefly. “Video evidence of Eros. Sit down.”

Yurio frowns, and sits, leaning forward with suspicion obvious in his eyes. He’s a natural reporter, Victor thinks—always taking things with a grain of salt. His ankles wrap around the legs of the chair and he supports his chin with one hand, elbow on the desk. Victor turns back to the computer and presses play.

It’s dark, and there’s a woman walking. Shiny silver purse in her hands. Some sort of a name brand.

What happens next happens in a flash.

The purse is gone, a man is running away. He’s wearing a hoodie and baggy jeans. A stereotypical, straight-out-of-the-movies mugging. Victor and Yurio hold their breath as they watch, both unmoving in their desk chairs.

And then, the man is on the ground, another figure on top of him. The purse is in the figure’s hands almost instantaneously. He hands it back to the woman, and then he’s gone. Victor rewinds, slows down the video, and sure enough, the figure is masked, shrouded in black. Unmistakable.

“It’s our guy,” Victor declares, and grins. “There he is. But we can’t get a good look at his face, which is annoying. I wonder if there were any other cameras on that road. Anything that might offer a different angle.”

“He was wearing a mask, wouldn’t do you any good,” Yurio points out. “But now you have enough corroboration for a story, right? I mean, this is pretty hardcore evidence if it matches up with your other stuff.”

He’d been subtly working on the Eros story since the first encounter. Hadn’t been able to get it out of his mind. There are the images from the Eros Robbery, and then there are snippets from Yakov of smaller crimes being solved by a man in black. Everything is slowly but surely working its way together, and Victor wants to be the one to fit the puzzle pieces, to understand it all.

“Who is he?” he whispers, and pauses, squinting at the computer screen. “Why is he doing this? I have so many questions, but…”

Yurio rolls his eyes. “Just because he saved your life and he’s beating up thieves—dudes who even _I_ could probably beat up—doesn’t mean he’s worth obsessing over. I say write your story and drop it. This is getting weird, Victor.”

“You can’t seriously say you’re not curious.”

At that, the blond sighs and taps the escape key on Victor’s keyboard, closing out of the video clip. “Sure, whatever, I’m curious. But not as curious as you. Why don’t you try thinking about the jobs that you’ve _actually been assigned_ to do for once?”

Victor turns to face him but his eyes instead land on Yuuri, who is sitting at his desk and nibbling on the end of a nutrition bar. Victor pauses, watches him for a second, and then leans back in his chair, deciding to drop the topic of Eros since he can practically feel Yurio’s emotions pulsating. “I’m going out with him on Sunday.”

“You’ve told me that five thousand times now.”

“Make this five thousand and one. I’m going out with Yuuri Katsuki on Sunday,” he repeats, proudly, and Yuuri, who is out of earshot, stops eating and stills. Victor doesn’t notice. “Where should I take him? I haven’t even thought about where I’ll take him. Although maybe he had a place in mind. Should I ask him?”

Yurio groans. “Victor, listen to me, okay? Are you listening?”

Victor doesn’t look at him. “I’m listening.”

“I _literally_ couldn’t care less. Like, there’s no possible way for me to care less.”

“I’ll go ask him,” he decides, and stands up.

“I’m surprised Celestino hasn’t fired you yet. You’ve got four articles to write, Nikiforov. You’re so behind on your workload that it’s painful to watch.”

Victor ruffles Yurio’s hair, much to the young boy’s chagrin. “Doesn’t romance trump all? See you, Yurio. I’ll write my article about Eros and you won’t be scolding me so much when this paper does more business than it has done in years.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

“Oh, I will.”

 

EXT. OUTSIDE OF YUURI KATSUKI’S APARTMENT BUILDING — NIGHT

 

Victor’s heart is threatening to beat out of his chest.

(He hopes that Yuuri won’t notice.)

He’s not sure why he’s so nervous, as he’s not normally the type to get nervous on dates. So he dampens the feelings and manages to get himself under control, the type of control that will allow him to look calm and cool on the outside but maintain his panic on the inside. Then, he slips out the sticky note, on which he’d written Yuuri’s apartment information after the other man had given it to him in the office a few days ago.

_Fourth floor. Door with the chipped frame._

Victor enters the lobby, makes his way to the elevator, pushes the button.

He licks his lips as he watches the golden number above the doors change from one to two to three to four. Then, the doors slide open and he steps out, wiping his hands on his skinny jeans. Chris, who they’re meeting at the bar, had insisted that it was a perfect outfit: skinny jeans and a blue shirt that’s tight around the torso and arms. Well, tight around everywhere, really. It’s not suffocatingly bad, but it’s certainly noticeable. He’d been perfectly agreeable with it until just now, standing outside Yuuri’s apartment. Now, he’s rethinking his outfit selection.

Phichit is coming with them as well, so there really hadn’t been a need for Victor to come here and walk with them. But he’d wanted to anyway, and Yuuri said he didn’t mind, so here he is, standing outside of the door with the chipped frame.

And standing.

(And standing.)

(Knock, he should knock.)

So he does.

(Two shaves and a haircut.)

“Coming!” a voice calls, and it’s Yuuri, and Victor had calmed himself down before but now there’s a new nervousness, the excited kind, and his toes are curling and he licks his lips again and, oh god, his hair, he’d forgotten to fix his hair, and there’s no mirror nearby but maybe he could use the reflection in the doorknob and manage to make it look decent and—

“You can come in,” Phichit says, and the door suddenly open. His eyes rake Victor, assessing him from head to toe. Whether or not he likes what he sees, Victor can’t tell. His eyes are glazed over with objective analysis. “Sorry, we just have to feed the hamsters before we leave.”

Victor nods, enters the apartment and looks around appreciatively. “You have hamsters?”

“Three of them,” Yuuri clarifies from somewhere, and Victor cranes his head to try and spot him. “Um, okay, there we go. Hang on, Phichit, come see—was that too much food? I think that was too much food.”

Phichit steps away and enters a room off to the right. Their apartment is nice, gray walls surrounding the kitchen, foyer, and living room, which are all combined. The kitchen itself has black marble countertops and few appliances. The living room consists of just a bookshelf, couch, and television, and off to the far right are two doors—Victor supposes one for each bedroom.

“Yeah, that was too much food, but that’s just why they all love you more than me,” Phichit jokes.

They step out of the farthest bedroom door, and then Victor finally sees Yuuri, who is wearing a pink sweater and dark slacks that Victor is fairly certain should be illegal given the way that they cling to his hips, his thighs, his calves. He smiles in his direction and Victor smiles back, stupidly happy. Phichit is still watching him.

“Yuuri Katsuki,” Victor says, and suddenly he’s not sure what to do with his hands—should he stuff them in his pockets, should he lean against the wall? In fact, he’s no longer sure about what to do with his legs, his whole person, his whole self.

“Victor Nikiforov,” Yuuri says, and picks his cane up from where it had been resting on a table. Then, he makes his way towards Victor, hoisting himself up onto a half-wall to the right of the door and swinging his legs, still smiling. “Ready to head out?”

Phichit grabs a coat out of a small, tucked-away closet and pulls it over his shoulders. “You want a coat, Yuuri, or you good?”

“I’m good, I think,” he answers.

Victor opens the door and they step into the hallway. “So Victor,” Phichit starts as they get into the elevator, “Yuuri says you’ve been working at the Tribune for four years now.”

Yuuri pushes the button for the lobby, not even needing to feel around for it, and the number above the doors starts decrementing as they’re lowered towards the lobby. “Four years,” he confirms, and smiles.

“So how old were you when you started?”

(It’s quite a roundabout way of asking his age.)

(But he supposes that this must be Phichit’s classic somebody-asked-Yuuri-out-on-a-date interrogation. Victor doesn’t know Phichit well enough to confirm that yet, but it’s a simple observation to make, especially for a journalist.)

“Twenty-three, I’m twenty-seven now.”

“We’re both twenty-three,” Phichit says, and he seems slightly less intimidating a second later, his personality evolving into something more bubbly. “But we’ve known each other, for, like, five years now? Or something?”

Yuuri smiles. “I think five is right.” He turns to Victor and adds, “We met in college.”

Phichit whistles at that. “You should’ve seen Yuuri Katsuki in college. It’s insane—he was a completely different person. I wonder what ever happened to that guy.”

Yuuri laughs and bumps his friend’s shoulder. “Shut up. I wasn’t that different.”

“What kind of different?” Victor asks as they exit the apartment building. Yuuri unfolds his cane and sets it out in front of him before they continue walking. “Party animal type?”

“Oh yeah. He had all these guys—and girls—drooling over him…”

“Oh my god, Phichit,” Yuuri complains, and hides his face with one hand. “He’s exaggerating. Don’t listen to him, please.”

Phichit turns to Victor and mouths, _not exaggerating._

“Are you mouthing something to him?” he accuses. “You weren’t much better yourself in college. Remember that time you woke up in our dorm room with two guys passed out beside you? Like you couldn’t decide which one to take home.”

“We were all clothed,” Phichit elaborates to Victor. “Yuuri, you shouldn’t have told a story like that, because you _know_ I’ve got one too many about you.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Well, I’m sure Victor wants to hear them.”

Victor grins, realizing that he likes Yuuri’s friend. “I’d love to.”

 

INT. SEUNG-GIL’S BAR — NIGHT

 

The bar that Yuuri and Phichit had picked is…

“It’s a mess, but it’s home,” Phichit explains, and slides into a booth. The table is covered in crumbs and there’s a wet stain where a glass must have been. The bar itself is long, crowded with people of all shapes and sizes, and the building is dark. Very dark. Dark to the point where Victor can’t tell if his foot is touching the leg of the table or Yuuri’s ankle even when he tries to glance underneath.

He spots Christophe across the bar and waves him over, and then he’s introduced to everyone. A second later, Phichit takes their orders and waltzes over to the bar, batting his eyelashes at the black-haired bartender who seems to recognize him, a smile flitting on the stranger’s lips before it’s pushed away.

“That’s Seung-gil,” Yuuri explains to Victor and Christophe. “Phichit asks him for free drinks every time we come here and it hasn’t worked a single time.”

Sure enough, Phichit comes back with a tray full of drinks and a disappointed look written across his face. “Not free, but he smiled at me—did you see that?”

A few drinks later and Victor and Yuuri are alone.

Phichit and Christophe had gotten up and gone somewhere, vague in their description, and even in a tipsy haze Victor could comprehend their joint mission to get himself and Yuuri alone. And they’d succeeded, because Yuuri Katsuki is currently sitting across from him sipping a beer and laughing a bit too hard at a joke that Victor can’t even remember now.

“Tell me more about yourself,” Victor prompts, and pushes his drink to the side, folding his arms on the table and lowering his chin to rest on them so that he can look up at him. “I’m curious.”

“Curious?” Yuuri responds, and pushes his own drink to the side. “What do you want to know? You already know plenty.”

“Mm. No I don’t. I want to hear more about these wild college days.”

He laughs and runs a hand through his hair—the motion is unbelievably distracting, the strands appear long, soft. “That’s… I’m just glad Phichit isn’t here still. Don’t get him started on that. He exaggerates it all. We had fun in college, but just fun.” There’s a pause. “Did you go?”

Victor nods. “Community college, journalism. It was good. Learned a lot. How to write, how to interview people—body language and all that.”

“Body language?” Yuuri inquires.

“Well, for example, you just touched the back of your neck. One might say that that’s a sign of something,” Victor muses, and layers his tone with extra teasing since Yuuri can’t see his devilish smile.

“A sign of what?” he asks, and tears his hand away from his neck like he had been electrocuted.

Victor shrugs one shoulder. “Not sure.” He takes his drink in hand again. “I never said I did _well_ in college, I just said that I went.”

“I think I’m at a disadvantage,” Yuuri claims. “You can see my body language but I can’t see yours. How do I know whether or not you’re… You’re…”

“Touching my neck? I’m not. I’m leaning forward, though, which I think one would argue is telling body language.”

“Telling of what?”

Victor hums. “Like I said, I’m not an expert. I’m simply a pursuer of details.” Then, he pauses, realizing something. “You don’t know what I look like, either.”

“Not really, no.”

“That’s a shame. _Handsome_ is the word that most people use,” Victor provides.

“The word that most people use, or the word that you use?”

“I’m hurt that you think I’d lie. I would bring Chris over to vouch for me,” he adds, watching Yuuri trace his finger around the edge of his glass, “but I’m enjoying sitting alone with you a bit too much.”

Yuuri laughs. “You’re shameless, aren’t you?”

“Shameless how?”

“With your flirting.”

“We’re flirting?” Victor asks innocently. “Hadn’t noticed.”

Yuuri reaches forward a hand, finds Victor’s elbow, which is still resting on the table, his forearms flat on the wood. Victor doesn’t move, keeps his chin on his arms. Yuuri’s hand explores until it has found his cheek, and he pulls away, startled. “Do you care if I…?”

“If you what?”

He bites his lip. “Try and feel what you look like?”

Victor gets off of the table, takes Yuuri’s hand in his own, and guides it to his face. “Are you really able to tell?”

“Kind of.” He starts on Victor’s cheek, then, encouraged, leans forward and concentrates, his eyebrows drawing together and a cute wrinkle forming between them. He feels his cheekbone, then moves to his jaw, thumb accidentally brushing across his lips—his face flushes—and trying for his nose instead. His index finger moves up the bridge of it and then he finds his forehead, feeling that as well.

“It’s big, I know,” Victor jokes, and Yuuri laughs, shaking his head. “Well? Am I handsome? What’s the verdict?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. After a second, he pulls his hands away.

“You can keep trying if you want.”

“Are you saying that because you want me to keep touching you or because you want me to call you handsome?” Yuuri teases and lowers his hands to his lap.

Victor thinks for a second. “Does it make me seem arrogant if I say both?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then both.”

Yuuri kicks him underneath the table. “You’re… You’re just…”

“Just what?”

“Relentless.”

Victor watches the way he leans back in the booth, cheeks flushed from the conversation and eyelashes beautiful, batting as he grabs for his drink and finds it on his first try, bringing it to his lips and downing a sip of the cool beer. “And are you okay with it? The relentlessness?”

“I’m okay with it,” he says, sounding surprised. “It’s definitely an uncommon trait.”

“What is?”

Yuuri shrugs one shoulder. “So many people try and avoid saying what they want, avoid their meaning, but you just cut to the chase. It’s refreshing, I guess. I don’t know. Never mind.” His words backtrack, falling on top of one another.

There’s a beat.

And then, screams.

The roar starts distant and then gets closer, and then there are people sprinting out of the bar, flooding and falling and flickering in Victor’s vision, his eyelids falling one, two, and then opening, one, two, Yuuri sitting across from him and slowly standing, Phichit looking shocked at the bar, scrambling off of the wobbly stool and to his feet.

Time slows, so do his legs. He moves one, moves the other, looks out the window and can’t see anything. When he looks in front of him, Yuuri is moving, almost fully out of the booth, now, feet about to land on the greasy wooden floors of the run-down bar. Victor blinks again, and then…

Snap.

“We have to go, both of you,” Phichit says, expression solemn as he reaches for his friend’s arm. “Come on. Something is happening.”

“Where’s Chris?” Victor asks, mind hazy, as Yuuri grabs his arm, dragging him out of the bar with them.

“He went home already,” the Thai nurse promises. “Come on, let’s go.”

Victor takes his phone out of his pocket. A police alert.

**10-59 A. 11th and 48th.**

_Ten fifty-nine,_ Victor thinks, slowly. _Ten fifty-nine, what’s a ten fifty-nine?_

Yuuri grips his arm more firmly, practically pulls him out of the booth. Then, they’re hurrying out of the building, and there are flickers of orange flames coming from a building just a block away from where they’d been. Low windows, screams coming from people outside of it as they try to determine whether or not anyone was inside.

The alert had said _A_ —that means a factory, he remembers. The building had been some sort of factory.

“There could be people inside,” he realizes, slowly, and steps out of Yuuri’s grip.

“Victor,” Yuuri warns, his tone grave. “It’s not safe.”

Victor licks his lips, glances back towards him. “Somebody might need help. It’s fine, I’m just going to check. You two go ahead.”

Nervous, Phichit takes Yuuri’s hand and squeezes his fingers. “Okay, Yuuri, let’s go home. The fire could spread or something.”

“It’s fine,” Yuuri promises, and keeping his body positioned towards Victor, towards the flames, even as Phichit tugs on him. “I’ll… I’ll go with you.”

“Phichit is right,” Victor says. “You should go home.”

Yuuri looks nervous, reaches out one hand towards the flames, switching it back and forth, palm to back, back to palm, as though feeling the warmth of the embers. But it’s way too far, and Victor shuts his eyes briefly, wishing he’d just acquiesce and go home. There could be people inside the building, and they’re not going to be able to wait for them to make up their minds.

“I’ll go visit Yuuko, make sure she’s okay,” Yuuri suggests alternatively.

Phichit frowns. “She’s fine, I’m sure. She’s probably just worried about you—our apartment is closer to this place than the rink. Yuuri, just…”

“I was planning on visiting her anyway,” he says, and shrugs. “Tonight, I mean. So it’s fine. I’ll just meet up with you later? It’s not like it’s dangerous around here or anything, Phichit. The fire isn’t huge, is it?”

It’s big enough to consume the small factory. Fire trucks are audible in the distance, racing towards the scene. Victor shifts his feet on the pavement, glances back towards the building. Phichit looks at Victor, concerned. “You’re not really going in there, are you?”

“I’ve got to,” he says apologetically, walking backwards. Yuuri’s face sinks, and Victor feels the image imprint in his mind, in his soul, but he doesn’t stop walking. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. I’ll see you at work, Yuuri. And bye, Phichit.”

With those final words, he turns on his feet and sprints towards the factory, heels scraping against the pavement. There are still people gathered outside, concerned, and every once and a while a coughing and wheezing figure will make their way out of the flames. Victor heads inside the main door, dodging the lick of an ember as he does so, and glances around through the ash and smoky air.

“Hello?” he calls to the main factory floor, which is lined with tables and machines of some sort. The smoke is thicker up ahead, and he can hardly see the far wall. There are stairs, though, leading to a second floor.

There’s one person left on the second floor, cowering in the corner. Victor approaches her, arm shielding his eyes from smoke and ash. “Come here!” he calls. “Walk around the edge, stay close to the walls.”

The woman nods, body shaking as she tries to sneak around the edge of the walls. But there’s a barrier of flames, and Victor looks around, unsure of what to do. “Go through fast,” he promises, sucking in a breath. “You can make it, wait for them to die down, then go through fast.”

There’s one nod to indicate that she understood. The flames roar, natural, then die down briefly, sinking low to the floor, the threat just as pertinent. The woman leaps, but her legs skim the flames, and Victor practically tackles her, putting out the fire before it can even catch properly. They lay beside the wall of flames, hyperventilating, and he takes her hand, leading her towards the stairs. “Hurry!”

When they make it out, there’s clapping, the woman coughing as she moves towards the paramedics. Victor clears his throat, wipes his forehead with the back of his arm, and sees that the fire department has arrived, already beginning to fight back the merciless flames.

“They’re connected,” a woman is saying as she walks quickly, squinting at the factory through the smoke. “Two factory fires in one night. There has to be some sort of a connection.”

“Two?” Victor asks, paramedics rushing towards him. He tries to brush them off, insisting with physical cues that he’s fine. “Two fires?”

The woman doesn’t pay any attention to him, and he glances around the crowds of people, some of whom are staring at him and some of whom are still watching the fire die down. One of the paramedics manages to get him into the edge of an ambulance and help him sit down on it, taking his vitals.

“I’m fine,” he insists, then adds a grateful smile out of manners, and gets up. There are only two police cars, and Yakov isn’t around, but…

Mila.

Victor hurries over to her—she’s on the phone and talking to another officer at the same time. Her short red hair bobs as she speaks and one of her hands is on a hip. “Mila,” Victor says, and she blinks at him in surprise. “Where’s the other fire? I heard a firefighter say there’s another fire going on.”

“Hi, Victor,” she greets, then looks him up and down and realization crosses her features. “Were you in there? Oh my god, are you okay? What were you doing?”

“Helping. Where’s the other fire?”

She shakes her head, confused. “The fire department is already there—I’m sure everyone’s fine. Go home. Get some rest. Do you need someone to look at you?” Mila glances back towards the paramedics.

Eros could be there.

If Eros wasn’t here, then…

Hang on—police alerts. He reaches into his pocket and produces his phone, hurries to press the home button and get his notifications to appear.

**10-59 A. 9th and 45th.**

“Ninth and forty-fifth,” he breathes, glancing around and trying to determine which direction to go in and then sprinting, leaving the fire and police and trucks behind him. Mila calls after him—concerned, probably—but he ignores her. He could’ve gotten pictures of that fire, yes, but a picture of Eros would be worth much, much more, and Victor has a chance that if two fires are going on tonight, the masked vigilante is bound to appear at one of them.

He races towards ninth and forty-fifth. The cold laces his skin and his legs carry him as quick as they can. His heart races in his chest and his lungs feel free, entire body exhilarated, familiar adrenaline coursing through his system and making him feel lighter, more powerful than he truly is.

If he hurries, if he hurries…

The fire is huge.

Bigger than the one before, all-consuming of the factory. The surrounding area is bordered off by police and the firefighters are marching their way into the buildings, trying to find any civilians or workers. Victor stands at the base of it, feeling useless, looking towards the vehicles surrounding him and the crowds of concerned citizens.

He spots Yakov and runs.

“Yakov,” he pants, hands on his knees. “Yakov, have you seen him? Is he here?”

“I don’t have time for this right—”

“There’s a group of three still inside, stuck on the back of the third level,” a man says into an intercom as they continue to work, fending off the flames and trying to extract the innocent victims.

Victor feels his heart sink.

He looks up at the building.

Yakov follows his line of sight.

And he knows that they see the same thing.

A black figure hopping across the burning rooftop to another one, a civilian in his arms. He lets go of them and then dashes back across, making the short gap with ease and then disappearing once again into the flickering orange and yellow, which is the only light that can illuminate him.

“He’s saving them,” Victor realizes out loud.

“Get up to that rooftop,” Yakov commands of the fighters, who were already in the process of moving towards the building before he’d spoken.

In an instant, Victor has darted into the building beside the factory. It’s a short apartment building that has been evacuated due to the proximity of the fire. Yakov calls after him but he finds the stairs because the elevator won’t be quick enough and climbs and climbs and climbs, firefighters close behind him, this building untouched by the flames so far. He makes his way up and he’s panting and exhaling and inhaling and sweating but then he finds the door with a silver bar on it and he presses it open, it clicks as it swings, and he’s on the rooftop and still breathing and trying to—

Three people.

Firefighters start to pile onto the roof after him, helping the citizens get inside of the building and down the stairs, gloved hands resting delicately on their backs and oxygen being provided if necessary. Victor stays where he is. But Eros is nowhere to be found.

Victor looks around—the flames on the factory have started to die, and it’s dark once again. But Eros couldn’t have gone far, and Victor glances around, knowing that he’ll need to act on his feet, knowing that he needs to get a photo, needs to get closer, needs to find him, needs to do _something._

He sees a short gap between two buildings. Short enough.

He runs.

The landing hurts. Victor gets to his feet and looks around, wondering where he could’ve gone, where he could’ve gone, where he could’ve gone. Somewhere, anywhere, his heart beats out of his chest, his breaths come out thick and white in the brisk New York air. There’s another roof to his right with a larger gap, one that is iffy on whether or not he could make it, and…

He breathes in, breathes out. He can do this.

If he jumps at just the right time, he can do this.

He steps forward, gets a better judgement on the gap and swallows, shutting his eyes briefly as he braces himself for what he’s about to do. He breathes in, out once again, in, out, in, out, brushes his feet on the gravel beneath him, focuses, he can do this, he can do this…

He takes off.

And is stopped.

Something hard on his chest, a pressure.

He falls backwards, landing on his back with his palms out behind him.

“What are you doing?”

Victor turns.

And it’s…

It’s…

He doesn’t have his camera, but he wishes he does. Phone, his phone, he could use his phone. His fingers twitch by his sides in anticipation of taking a photo, but he finds that after a second, he doesn’t want to, because he’s capturing a thousand photos with his mind, raking the figure at the edge of the roof with his eyes, analyzing, capturing.

“Go inside,” the voice snaps, and it’s low, odd.

All Victor sees is a black outline.

He scrambles to his feet and steps closer.

“Don’t get closer,” the man in black warns. “Go back.”

“Who are you?” Victor asks.

There’s no response, and he takes another step. The figure takes a step backwards in response. “Were you looking for me?”

He nods.

(Frozen by horror and awe.)

“Why?”

“You saved my life,” he explains, and those hadn’t been the words he’d intended, but they’d slipped out naturally. “I’m a journalist, and I…” He trails off, squints at him, but he can’t see anything. If he could just step closer, if he’d just let him step closer…

“Don’t look for me,” the voice commands.

Then he’s gone.

Victor feels like a child after a nightmare, entire form trembling, eyes huge, and it’s odd, because when he looks at the gap between the buildings again, he realizes: he wouldn't have been able to make that. How could he have thought that he’d been able to get across that?

 

INT. HISTORY MAKER TRIBUNE BUILDING — MORNING

 

Victor tells Yurio everything.

“So, no pictures?” Yurio asks, voice sounding casually unimpressed but his eyes revealing the truth. He listened to Victor’s story intently, cautiously taking in the information, and Victor knows he’d been trying to draw connections, trying to sort out the case.

“No pictures,” he says regretfully. Victor moves his arm against his desk and has to bite back a groan—he’d gotten a burn last night and hadn’t noticed until he’d gotten home. Even after putting ointment on it, it still aches whenever it brushes against something. He turns his head he sees Yuuri entering the room, making his way to his desk and sitting down.

_Yuuri._

Victor winces.

“I’m guessing your date didn’t go well after you ran off to play in fires and chase masked vigilantes,” Yurio snickers. “Or is he nuts enough to find that endearing, too?”

“It didn’t go well,” Victor admits. “It went well until that, though, and the circumstances were inevitable, so…” He stands up. “I’ll be right back. I should talk to him.”

He isn’t sure what Yuuri had thought of last night, since, as Yurio had so eloquently pointed out, he’d gone to play in fires and chase masked vigilantes. Needless to say, it hadn’t been his ideal date. Yet when he thinks about their time at the bar, the sound of Yuuri’s laugh, the sound of his voice when he’s teasing… It naturally brings a smile to Victor’s face in a way that few other things can.

“Yuuri Katsuki,” Victor greets cheerfully as he slides up a chair and sits down beside him at his desk. “Listen, I’m sorry about…”

“You should be more careful,” Yuuri says, robotically, like the words have been rehearsed time and time again, and turns.

Oh.

Well Victor hadn’t expected—

“You just ran into a fire,” he complains, voice slightly less abrasive than that first scolding had been, but just as passionate. “What were you thinking? Why would you…? The police and firefighters can handle all of that. You don’t need to step in and play hero. You’ll just get in the way.”

“I helped,” Victor argues.

“But there are people who care about you. You’re not helping them any.”

Victor runs a hand through his hair. “Listen. I’m very sorry for how we left things yesterday, but don’t worry about me. I was worried about _you._ Did you make it home okay? Is Phichit alright?”

“Why are you worried about _me_ when you were…?” Yuuri sighs and shakes his head. “Never mind, just… Just be more careful. Don’t make impromptu decisions regarding your own wellbeing. If not for your sake, then for everyone else’s sake. Please?”

He smiles, flirtatious. “So, Yuuri Katsuki is worried about my wellbe—”

For that, he gets a kick to the shin. “That’s not funny. I’m serious, Victor.”

“Sorry. Okay, yes, I won’t make impromptu decisions regarding my wellbeing anymore. I’ll be more careful and I’ll think things through, and I’m sorry.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.” Yuuri appears to relax. “But, Yuuri, I need to show you something.”

He purses his lips. “Show me what?”

Victor touches his hand delicately. “May I?”

Yuuri nods, and Victor laces their fingers, reveling in the feeling of it. He pushes in Yuuri’s chair for him after they’ve stood then leads him across the office, careful to keep him close. If anyone notices the fact that they’re holding hands slightly too intimately for it to just be for the purpose of guidance, then they don’t say anything.

“You’re telling katsudon about your article?” Yurio asks, sounding offended.

“Katsudon?” Victor and Yuuri inquire at the same time.

The blond rolls his eyes. “I saw him eating katsudon in the lunch room the other day. So that’s his name now. Not the point. You’re going to tell him?”

“Tell me about what?” Yuuri asks.

“Okay, sit, I’ll show you. I’ve been writing this article—Yurio has been helping me—about a vigilante.” He pauses, waits for a reaction, but doesn’t see any. “There was a robbery a while back at a jewelry store, and he saved my life. I got a few pictures, but they’re blurry. And now there’s video evidence. And, get this—he was at one of the factory fires last night. And,” he lowers his voice, glances around, “I spoke to him.”

Yuuri’s eyebrows shoot up. “You… Spoke to him? To a masked vigilante? In New York?” He laughs nervously, voice going high. “Um, you know how that sounds, right? Are you sure you didn’t read about this in a Marvel comic?”

“I know it sounds crazy,” he admits, “but it’s true.”

“He’s not lying. He’s an idiot, but he’s not lying,” Yurio adds. “So he’s been trying to get more evidence to corroborate the story.”

It occurs to him that he’d never let go of Yuuri’s hand, and the realization brings a smile to his face. “A story like that could do wonders for the Tribune’s business.”

Yuuri appears to be thinking. “Is that why you went into the fire last night? You were trying to find your masked vigilante to sneak a photo of him and help the Tribune?”

“Hang on. You told me you didn’t go into the fire, you said you just went into the apartment building _next_ to the fire,” Yurio accuses.

Victor winces at that, rubs the back of his neck. “I, er, left the first part out…”

“Listen, I… I don’t think you should write a story about this supposed vigilante,” Yuuri says as Yurio stares at Victor in disbelief, attempting to break up the tension between the adoptive brothers. “Especially if writing the story means you have to risk your own life.”

“But it would sell,” Victor reminds him. “It’d sell like crazy. People would eat it up. Don’t you want to help the business? Isn’t it worth it?”

Victor squeezes his hand and Yuuri shakes his head. “Then write the story, but don’t… Don’t do anything dangerous for it. Okay? There’s something going on in New York lately, but the story definitely isn’t worth your own life. Just… Follow it from a distance. Be careful. I mean, there were two factory fires in one night. That’s not a coincidence.”

“Okay. Do you want to read what I have of the article so far?”

Yuuri nods. “Sure. I’d need my screen reader.”

Victor hurries to fetch it, then hooks it up to his own computer within a few minutes. He pulls up the article. Yuuri puts his fingers on the reader and Victor watches, shifting in his seat. “Well?”

“That’s good,” Yuuri says, and then laughs a little. “Definitely attention-catching.”

“I edited it,” Yurio points out, taking some credit. Then, he stands up. “I’ve got to go talk to Celestino about this dumb article on basketball. Bye, katsudon. Bye, Victor.”

When Yurio gone, Victor runs a hand through his hair and clears his throat. “You know, Yuuri, I… I had fun last night. Before the fire.”

“Right. Before the fire,” Yuuri agrees. “It was… Nice.”

“Nice? Was that a ‘second date’ _nice_ or a ‘that went horribly’ _nice?_ ”

Yuuri grins. “Would there be more incidents like that on our second date?”

Victor moves his hand across his desk and teasingly brushes his fingers across Yuuri’s own. The touch makes his breath catch, eyes flutter, and he loves the way that Yuuri reacts to things like that, lips parting and legs shifting. “I’m not sure. But I promise no vigilante hunting. I won’t leave like that again.”

A pause.

Yuuri licks his lips. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

The intern sucks in a breath, then turns away. “Why do you… Why would…?” He starts a few fragmented questions, but trails off each time, laughing in a poor attempt to cover the blatant nervousness.

“What?” Victor insists. “What is it?”

“Why would you want to?”

“Want to what?”

“Have a… You know, why would you want to go on… With me…”

It takes a second for it to click in Victor’s mind. “Are you asking me why I would want to go on a second date with you?”

He doesn’t say anything, but it’s a yes by omission.

“Because I like you,” he answers simply, because it’s true, because just saying those four words is making him smile, because Yuuri is smiling, now, too, and because he’s absolutely beautiful and Victor still isn’t quite over the sparkle in his eyes or the pink of his lips. There are countless reasons, really.

Yuuri doesn’t say anything, and a second later they’re both laughing. Instead of replying, he reaches his fingers towards where Victor’s had been, brushes his own across them. It’s a touch as delicate as that of a feather, but it’s there. Victor watches him intently. “I like you, too,” Yuuri admits after a moment, and Victor feels his heart leap out of his chest at the admission.

“Even though you don’t know if I’m handsome?”

At that, he laughs, covers his face with a hand. “You’re so…”

He grins. “What? Good at making you blush? I’m sorry, but it’s fun.”

“ _Victor,_ ” he warns, his stifled laughter betraying his threatening tone.

“You look cute when you blush.” He touches Yuuri’s hand again. “Oh, look, it’s working! There it is. _There_ it is. Just like that.”

“Stop,” he says through fits of laughter, turning his face away to hide himself from Victor’s view. “Stop it.”

Victor keeps his hand where it is because Yuuri isn’t protesting. “Not my fault you’re fun to tease, Yuuri. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that’s entirely your own fault. I’d even go so far as to say that you _like_ it.”

“Look at you, psychoanalyzing me. You don’t know a thing about me, Victor Nikiforov,” Yuuri teases, and Victor is very glad, in that moment, that the man beside him can’t see that he’s blushing, too. He’s certain that Yuuri’s teasing would be merciless if he knew.

“Au contraire, I think I’ve got you figured out. You’re an open book.”

Yuuri blinks, surprised by that. “And I think you’d be surprised.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“How’s that?”

He bites his lip. “Maybe you’ll find out on our second date.”

Victor’s heart races. “On our second date?”

“Our second date to…” He pauses, considering. “To lunch.”

“Our second date to lunch,” Victor repeats in agreement. “And when is this second date to lunch scheduled for?”

“Thursday.”

It’s Monday. Victor runs his thumb up Yuuri’s index finger, notes the way that he shivers. “Why not Tuesday? Or Wednesday? Or today, for that matter?”

“Why not Thursday? Are you in a hurry?”

“Yes.”

Yuuri laughs, breathless, and opens his mouth to add something else when Yurio clears his throat from beside them. They both look up at the teenager, and Yuuri slowly retracts his hand away from Victor’s. “Celestino said that if you two want to keep your jobs, you’d better get back to work.”

“There’s no way that Celestino said that,” Victor protests.

“Yeah, well, _I_ said it.”

Yuuri smiles and gets up, making his way back to his desk. Victor leans his elbow on his own desk and watches him dreamily, making sure to let out a breathy little sigh so that Yurio’s angry glare increases in intensity. “He’s pretty, isn’t he?”

“Your wage ought to be docked for every minute you spend drooling over the intern instead of, you know, _working on articles._ But then I guess you wouldn’t get any money at all.”

“I can’t wait until you get a crush on someone, Yurio,” Victor mumbles.

“Gross. Not happening. Now come help me edit this stupid article about this politician guy. Look at this cover picture—he’s doing this weird pose. God, the things people will do for votes.”

A pause.

“Victor, were you even listening to me?”

“Oh,” he realizes, tearing his gaze away from Yuuri. “What?”


End file.
